Fresh perspective

Joy Rifkin

Sustainability Manager at LRS

Joy Rifkin has always been passionate about sustainability. As a biology and environmental studies major at the University of Wisconsin, Rifkin was involved in many sustainability initiatives around campus, including the Big Red Go Green project, where she helped lead a residence hall energy competition, implement campuswide composting systems and advocate for policies to combat climate change.

After graduation, Rifkin began a career as a middle school science teacher with Chicago Public Schools, where her dedication to sustainability did not waver.

“I was always incorporating sustainability projects into the work we did in the classroom,” Rifkin says. “Measuring our recycling, collecting data around cafeteria waste, doing trials with composting—we were always doing projects with waste because it was tangible; it was something students could really understand.”

After three years as a teacher, she pivoted to sustainability work. As a zero-waste coordinator and sustainability specialist with the New York City Department of Education, Rifkin designed the Zero Waste Schools Program. The program first was implemented at approximately 110 schools across Brooklyn and Manhattan, eventually expanding composting systems to almost 1,800 schools.

Rifkin since has returned to Chicago as sustainability manager for LRS, a Rosemont, Illinois-based waste and recycling provider. In her 2 ½ years with the company, she continues to connect education, community outreach and sustainability operations, including her work on LRS’ early employment program, which pairs students studying to be diesel technicians with experienced LRS mechanics.

“We have to engage with the communities we serve,” she says. “We have to listen and hear what their struggles are. We have to share our perspective and the challenges that we face every day as a business [and] an essential service.”

In the following interview, Rifkin discusses how her background in education helps in her current work and the benefits of LRS’ early employment program.

Recycling Today (RT): How has your teaching background informed the work you do now with LRS?

Joy Rifkin (JR): You can do all the retrofits on the back end, you can do all the data-gathering, but if you’re not communicating why this matters, what we’re doing [and] how we’re doing it, you lose the impact dramatically of what you could have. So, I think education is so foundational to this work [and] I’m so grateful I have that background.

I was always thinking, “How can I bring this to life for seventh and eighth graders? How can I make them excited about this project or this experiment?” Having that lens and coming into working with waste and sustainability, not only did it help me in schools in New York City ... but it helps me here because we’re interacting with stakeholders from all different backgrounds. ... I think education is just one of those threads that I’m so grateful to have in my life and I think it really brings an important element to sustainability work.

RT: How did you implement LRS’ early employment program?

JR: We work with Universal Technical Institute, a technical university training diesel and auto mechanics. They have an early-employment model we took and modified.

Students studying to be diesel technicians [are] paired with ... journeyman mechanics who work at our LRS facilities. These students work part-time while they are in school. They come to LRS for a few hours every day, learn from a journeyman mechanic and then take classes at Universal Technical Institute. When they graduate, if they want to be hired full-time and they interview, they can get a position at LRS, and we will contribute to paying back their student loans.