Reader Profile: Tanya Adams

After Tanya M. Adams won SWANA’s Professional Achievement Award in 2011, she didn’t rest on her laurels. One wonders if Adams rests at all, given her many responsibilities as recycling program manager for the Cecil County (Maryland) Department of Public Works’ Solid Waste Division, student, wife and mother. For Adams, it’s not enough to just do her job—each day, she seeks opportunities to do it better.

What She Does Day to Day
Each day’s new tasks bring new adventures, says Adams. One day, she’s at her desk balancing accounts or tracking tonnages. The next day, she’s taking a kindergarten class around the landfill and recycling center for a tour, or loading recycling bins into a rolloff container for an upcoming county event. Adams manages more than 35 recycling and special waste programs, the recycling and advertising portion of the $200,000 solid waste budget, public and private recycling grants, contracts, and advertising. She creates media and writes specifications for requests for proposals and quotes for the division. Adams works with a team of supervisors, weighmasters, transfer station operators, and office personnel to coordinate pickup of various recyclables at all solid waste facilities, tracking and reporting incoming and outgoing recycling, and refuse tonnages. She programs changes in fees, materials, and other information into the scale software system. Adams conducts landfill and recycling center tours and offers recycling presentations.

What Led Her to This Work
Adams grew up fishing, crabbing, hiking, camping, and ­hunting in Cecil Count in northeastern Maryland at the head of the ­Chesapeake Bay. “This proximity to the Bay and the five rivers running through the county gave me an environmentally-slanted outlook on life,” she notes.

A member of her high school’s environmental club, Adams went on to earn an A.S. degree in biology. She worked for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources as a seasonal ranger and volunteer coordinator at Elk Neck State Park, as a Maryland Conservation Corps crew member, and, in 2000, began as a laborer with the Cecil County Solid Waste Management Division. She was soon promoted to weighmaster at the Central Landfill, where she got a bird’s-eye view of the amount of materials that could be recycled or reused instead of landfilled.

Within the first four years of her selection as the recycling program manager, 13 recycling programs were added to the division, which won three Small Government Leadership awards from the Maryland Recycling Network and SWANA’s Silver Excellence Award in Recycling. She became certified by SWANA as a recycling manager, composting manager, and as a technical associate of landfill operations. Adams received a B.S. in Environmental Management in 2012 from the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) with the help of SWANA scholarships. She’s working toward environmental management and business administration master’s degrees. Adams recently earned Maryland Department of Agriculture’s compost facility operator certification.

What She Likes Best About Her Job
Adams’ joy is in working with people, from her “excellent” staff of solid waste management professionals, to living and working in the “very environmentally conscious county where residents take real pride in recycling”—such as those she meets when promoting recycling at public festivals, or the children eager to learn from her about the three Rs: reuse, reduce, recycle. Many innovative programs and marketing strategies arose from discussions with industry colleagues and the public.

Her Greatest Challenge
Adequately managing her duties with a limited budget and staff, while still finding time for schoolwork and her family—a nine-year-old son, a six-year-old daughter, and a husband who also works in solid waste management—is Adams’ biggest challenge.

“I’ve managed to stretch our recycling budget by restructuring our contracts to base them on markets, allowing us to increase recycling revenues and offset our expenses,” says Adams. “Changing public perception of solid waste from something left and forgotten at the curb, to something that has value and a direct effect on the environment and our future has been a challenge, but over the last few years, this tide is beginning to turn.”

In her most challenging times, she takes solace from one of her favorite quotes, this Native American proverb: “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”