Adam Ellner (BS '18 MS '19)

Adam has demonstrated a continued devotion to reducing waste both on and off campus. Through his work at Peninsula Sanitary Service Inc., he has helped improve recycling and composting practices at Stanford Stadium and cafés across campus. After football games at the stadium, Adam has been seen hard at work past midnight, well after the stands have cleared out, reaching deep into the bins to pick out any plastic items that would contaminate the compost.

Freshman year, Adam and fellow student Aitran Doan partnered with the City of San Jose to advance their outreach campaign to teach community members about the proper disposal of household hazardous waste. Adam spent the following summer working with Waste Management as a member of the Recycle Corps public outreach and education team in the Puget Sound region around his hometown of Seattle. He returned to the Emerald City yet again the following summer to intern with an organization called Capitol Hill EcoDistrict, where he developed the Capitol Hill Recycling Champions Program, an educational environmental stewardship pilot program for Capitol Hill Housing to implement at 10 low-income housing buildings across Seattle.

Among friends, he's the guru of waste not just because he is knowledgeable about the subject but because he goes to such lengths to communicate its importance. Feel free to ask him any waste-related questions at any given time.