This week: June 27, 2025 - NBRC - Strategic Plan, Membership (Zoom only)
With over 25 years’ experience, Katie is a recognized non-profit leader, field practitioner, and international conservationist. At the helm of Wild Earth Allies since 2003, and leading our re-branding in 2016, Katie focuses on delivering the Wild Earth Allies mission to protect vital areas of our natural world for the benefit of wildlife,
habitats and people by inspiring collaborative action. Her grounded leadership style draws from years spent living in Rwanda as director of the International Gorilla Conservation Program and as program technical director for the African Wildlife Foundation. Her earlier career included grant-making with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, private sector natural resource management consulting, and land use planning.
Katie serves as an Environmental Liaison with Rachel’s Network, a notable community of women philanthropists, and was recently selected as an inaugural member of Charity Navigator’s Consultative Council of Nonprofit Leaders.
She holds a Master’s degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she combined study of landscape ecology with coursework at the Yale School of Management on applied economics and nonprofit management. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia with a major in environmental studies.
Every minute, two garbage trucks’ worth of plastic enter our oceans. It is now estimated that over 15 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean every year. Plastic can be found in the deepest depths of our seas and the highest mountain peaks of our lands. Plastic can be found in the air, in the rain, and in our drinking water. Plastic pollution impacts us all and continues to worsen every year.
This presentation will focus on the impacts of plastic in our oceans and the varying types of plastic polluting our seas. Elizabeth will share firsthand experiences of seeing plastic adversely affect marine animals. The lecture will also emphasize where plastic is coming from and common myths surrounding the top plastic polluters on our planet.
Elizabeth Linske is an Environmental Metrology and Policy graduate student at Georgetown University, studying environmental chemistry and the connection between science and Federal policy. Before returning to graduate school, she spent six years working as a marine scientist specializing in marine animal conservation. During this time, Elizabeth helped to save over 1,500 sea turtles as well as hundreds of seals, dolphins, and whales. This work enabled her to visualize the connection between animals, the ecosystem, and how anthropogenic impacts are affecting both. She witnessed population shifts, habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, entanglements, and plastic ingestion. This allowed Elizabeth to recognize that she wanted her actions to protect marine life to be on a larger scale, spurring her decision to return to graduate school to further her knowledge on how science informs Federal policymaking. Over the past year, Elizabeth worked at Oceana on the Plastic Campaign team where she co-authored a national report title, Choked, Strangled, Drowned: The Plastic Crisis Unfolding in Our Oceans. Elizabeth is always looking to educate as many people as possible on how to reduce their plastic use and help make the planet healthier.
In his talk, Bob will discuss electronic waste (E-waste), which includes various forms of waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) that have ceased to function properly to their owners. Technological advances are generating a considerable volume of E-waste at an alarming rate as the demand for electronic products is on the rise at the global level. Most of the households in developed and developing countries are rapidly acquiring multiple electronic products and home appliances. Consumers around the world are connecting at a rapid rate to the information and communication technology devices such as computers, smartphones, and tablets. In addition, more people using equipment and gadgets and are now adapting to the smart economy. These products include but are not limited to electric toothbrushes, smartwatches, smart water bottles, smart mugs, electrical and electronic tools, toys, leisure and sports equipment, medical devices, monitoring and control instruments, and automatic dispensers.
E-waste is also one of the emerging and fastest-growing pollution problems in the world, with an estimated over 53 million metric tons produced globally in 2019 and the value of raw materials to be worth of approximately $57 billion. E-waste is mostly exported from Western countries to low-income Asian and African countries. Developing countries face a serious problem in managing E-waste. In majority of these countries, the collected E-waste includes both domestically generated and imported from developed countries.
Electronic waste is recycled to recover raw materials and resalable parts that can be sold to create income. In addition to valuable materials such as gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and rare earth elements, E-waste contains many types of hazardous chemicals that are released during the recycling process and are known to be harmful to human health and ecological habitats. Both, domestically generated E-waste, and the imported from developed countries is processed using crude and unsafe recycling practices such as open burning, coal-fired grill heating, and leaching using acid baths to extract high-value elements and materials.
Bob will briefly discuss the scope of the problem, current global E-waste generation, its movement and distribution, recycling practices, exposure scenarios, and major human health and environmental effects, special populations at risk, including risk assessment challenges.
Dr. Sonawane, currently our club’s Membership Director, received his Ph.D. degree in Entomology with specialization in Toxicology from the University of Missouri. He was a NIH postdoctoral Fellow and served as a faculty member in the Departments of Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the School of Medicine, and at the School of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Sonawane worked as a Toxicologist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in Rockville, MD. He served as a toxicologist and manager at the National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA), Office of Research and Development of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Sonawane has over 35 plus years research and management experience in toxicology and pharmacology and cancer/non-cancer health risk assessment of environmental pollutants. He is an author and/or co-author of over 120 publications and several book chapters in toxicology and pharmacology, children’s environmental health and risk assessment of environmental chemicals. Dr. Sonawane was involved in providing leadership in coordinating and managing several health risk assessments of chemicals. He is retired from the US EPA in 2016 and started consulting company along with Dr. Bruce Fowler in the areas of toxicology and health risk assessment, environmental chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Since 2017, he is an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University in Washington DC.
