Eureka Recycling Establishes Executive Team

Eureka Recycling, Minneapolis, has announced a new leadership structure comprised of a three-person collaborative executive team. Together, the company’s Tim Brownell, Susan Hubbard and Debbie King, as CEO, CSO and CFO respectively, will design and oversee initiatives to further the organization’s mission.

From left to right: Brownell, Hubbard, King

“We have confidence that under this new leadership Eureka Recycling will give credence to all of the investments that so many people and groups have made in us—and in our success,” says Susan Hubbard. “By welcoming this change, we become an organization of change, one that does not simply react but steps into and is a part of what needs to be created.” Hubbard has co-led Eureka Recycling as CEO, with Tim Brownell as COO, since its creation in 2001.

Brownell has stepped up to be the organization’s CEO, while Hubbard has taken on a new position of chief strategy officer (CSO), shaping the organization’s strategies to address challenges and opportunities, implement long-term and short-term strategic actions and articulate these strategies to the organization’s stakeholders. King has been hired as CFO, a new position that the company says will allow Eureka Recycling to calculate and realize the value of the organization’s zero-waste work.

King, hired in March 2010, has more than 20 years’ experience in financial management in the nonprofit sector and has held the CFO position at St. David’s Child Development and Family Services, Second Harvest Heartland and, most recently, First Children’s Finance.

“I am very impressed with the commitment of the staff to this mission and the quality of their work. I am very excited to support this organization in all the ways that I can,” King says.

In 2009, Eureka Recycling completed its new strategic plan, which, according to the leadership of the organization, required this new structure.

“There are still some people who don’t believe we can get to zero waste, but more people than ever before believe in the value and potential of zero waste,” says Brownell. “With our new strategic plan and this leadership structure in place, we are now going to be able to get closer to realizing our mission than ever before—to demonstrate that waste is completely preventable. All of our programs, services and advocacy work will continue to help individuals, organizations and entire communities achieve their own zero-waste goals.”

Eureka Recycling is a $10 million organization that employs more than 100 people. It directly serves more than 175,000 households in the metro area with recycling services via a fleet of recycling collection trucks and a recycling facility that processes 60,000 tons of recyclable materials annually. It now also serves the entire seven-county, Twin Cities metro area with a wide range of initiatives, including reuse, recycling, composting, waste reduction, producer responsibility and more.