The former General Manager of the Monterey Regional Waste Management District and current Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) vice president, Tim Flanagan, is now a project director with SCS Engineers in Pleasanton, California. Flanagan is putting his three decades of recycling and solid waste expertise to work for the firm's clients.
Flanagan is well known in the waste industry and continues making contributions to the industry in North America and globally. He's accomplished several successful waste diversion and recycling programs and sustainable facilities. He played a key role in developing a pilot anaerobic digestion facility in California to process organics from the municipal solid waste stream.
He is the previous director of SWANA's Recycling and Special Waste Technical Division and presently the Vice President of the SWANA International Board. In that capacity, he helps develop the association's new strategic plan and participates in identifying, selecting, and prioritizing the plan goals and strategies. Flanagan is also a past Gold Rush Chapter president, where he led efforts to team with the California Resource Recovery Association for the very Zero Waste Certification training program.
Flanagan's public sector experience started in the City of Palo Alto and with the county of Santa Clara before he moved into the private sector. He was Waste Management's western region director of recycling overseeing a thirteen-state network of MRFs and material sales and district manager of collection, recycling, and transfer station operations covering northern and southern California for seventeen years.
In 2015, the Monterey Regional Waste Management District (MRWMD) appointed him as general manager following his ten years as the assistant general manager. During his tenure, Flanagan oversaw $50 million of facilities expansion and development in materials recovery facility recycling and composting operations, equipment maintenance, household hazardous waste, engineering, and landfill site operations. In 2016, SWANA's Sustainable Material Management division recognized Flanagan with its "Distinguished Individual Achievement" Award.
In 2021, Flanagan initiated the partnership with the Veteran's Transition Center of Monterey County with The Last Chance Mercantile. This public/non-profit partnership that Flanagan helped create provides stable jobs for veterans in transition and the reuse of recovered items instead of landfilling. The store offers an extensive inventory of unique items ranging from books to boats, scrap lumber to furniture, and clothing to household treasures. The program has been selected by the Monterey County Weekly Readers Poll as the "Best Eco-Friendly Business in Monterey County" for many years.
"Tim is a collaborator, a mentor, a motivator," said Michelle Leonard, SCS's senior vice president leading its sustainable materials management practice. "He embodies the spirit of resource recovery in all he has accomplished and his industry contributions. It is our pleasure and honor to welcome him to SCS Engineers."