Daniela Siggia has been named the new VP, Development of Textile Waste Diversion. Siggia takes on her new role effective June 6th, 2020.
Siggia began her career in customer service. When she was first made a director at TWD, she was tasked with providing expertise to municipalities in relation to pirate clothing bin operators, and to changing public perception to the environmental and economic benefits of textile landfill diversion.
After municipal regulations for clothing donation bins were put into place, TWD saw collections drop by two thirds. Siggia’s focus then became diversifying TWD’s collection streams to include services for thrift store charities, starting a telemarketing home pickup service and offering multi-unit dwelling collection services.
On her first day as VP, Siggia eliminated TWD’s telemarketing outreach dept in favour of postal and online outreach, and she is redirecting resources to develop a public education campaign about the potential Textile Waste Diversion offers the provinces.
Siggia is tasked with rolling out an automated process to manage TWD’s growing client base, and to oversee the development of a municipal waste diversion metrics system. This system will analyze the textile waste diversion patterns of residents in order to better plan municipal infrastructure to meet the unique needs of each community.
Other areas Siggia will be focusing on in her new role include:
- Running a data collection pilot project in several municipalities across the province, implementing curb-side collection and other services to these areas
- Building relationships with other private sector companies like property management companies to solve municipal waste diversion and other community problems at the private sector level
- Assisting municipal governments in determining the best textile waste diversion stream, given the unique needs of each municipality, and to implement the infrastructure required to effectively reduce the amount of residential waste going to landfill
- Working with smaller charity collectors in the sector to ensure that their market share is protected and not reduced by our expansion
- Researching the economic viability of implementing new green technology to close the loop of textiles in Canada
- Researching and finding solutions to the industrial textile waste market
“It is often very difficult for municipal governments to actually implement infrastructure and policy because of red tape between departments, as well as partisan divisions and lobby influence within city Councils,” said Siggia. “The private sector is free of such obstacles, and I believe it is our duty to use our privilege to help communities become more sustainable and economically empowered.
“When the private sector comes together and works together, we are often better positioned to do things far more effectively and efficiently than government can. When municipal governments offer us either freedom or support, then we are in the best possible scenario for creating dramatic improvements both environmentally and economically.”