Center for Zero Waste Design

The Center consults with design teams, community organizations and municipalities to integrate best practices for zero waste into programming and design of buildings and the public realm. Clare is an architect and systems thinker with experience designing buildings to Passive House, LEED Platinum, Living Building Challenge and AIA COTE Top Ten stan... dards. She has over 20 years of architectural experience, most recently at Kiss + Cathcart, Architects where she helped develop their philosophy of "productive" architecture. Clare led the development of the Zero Waste Design Guidelines through a multidisciplinary and collaborative process. As a certified biomimicry professional, she finds inspiration from natural systems that she applies to the built environment. Clare has also founded a consultancy - ThinkWoven - to develop strategies to weave urban systems into ecosystems. Clare is Co-chair of the AIANY's Committee on the Environment; on the board of BiomimicryNYC and Sustainability Coordinator for her local food cooperative. Juliette Spertus trained as an architect and is a consultant on waste systems. She organized the 2019 exhibit Fast Trash: Roosevelt Island's Pneumatic Tubes and the Future of Cities, which investigates the planned community's system of trash collection. She is also co-founder of ClosedLoops-a planning firm developed with planning and policy researcher Benjamin Miller-to develop innovative waste and freight infrastructure projects. ClosedLoops co-authored New York City's Zero Waste Design Guidelines with architect and project lead, Clare Miflin of ThinkWoven, and Christina Grace of Foodprint Group. Benjamin Miller is the senior research associate for Freight Programs at the University Transportation Research Center, Region II. A former director of policy planning for the New York City Department of Sanitation (where he was project manager and principal author of the City's first Solid Waste Management Plan), he is the author of Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York, the Last 200 Years and ...Read More