The major event of the past month was our conference:  Waste-The Social Context '08. To my mind this was a great success, and great credit is due to the hard work and enthusiasm of the wonderful organizing committee, and the small army of volunteers, that made it so. Our Centre is built on teamwork and contributions of time and energy from our partner organizations, and the conference was a perfect illustration of how this can deliver world class results.
       My lasting impressions of the conference have to do with the conversations that I witnessed between people from different countries and cultures. I found it striking that, when waste management is considered in the context of overall environmental sustainability, there is a lot of commonality in the problems that we all face-regardless of the political and economic systems that we operate in. Globalization is very real! Providing a forum to discuss these problems-both formally and informally-is what the conference was all about.
      The conference was also about making linkages and establishing relationships. It is no accident that over the last two weeks, I have been in e-mail contact with people from the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, and Asia concerning opportunities for future collaboration. We welcome this interest, and it is worth reiterating that the "Edmonton" in our name should be seen as referring to our home base, not our scope of operations!