Karen Luken has partnered with SCS Engineers, Long Beach, California, as a sustainable materials management (SMM) specialist. She will provide environmental consulting services to the firm’s SMM clients and will be based in SCS’ Cincinnati office.

Luken brings 25 years of professional experience helping communities, governments, and business leaders achieve their waste management goals. She specializes in the planning, design, and implementation of integrated waste management systems.

Most recently, working as the Global Waste Director for the Clinton Foundation Climate Initiative, she provided the environmental, socio-political, and financial expertise to design national waste management strategies and establish public-private partnerships for waste systems typically requiring a $30 million capital expenditure.

Luken works with businesses and communities within the waste life cycle, including suppliers, producers, consumers, collectors, and facility operators. Her success springs from her ability to prove, and then leverage, the technical feasibility and economic viability of decreasing dependency on landfills by maximizing the use of waste as a resource to produce green products and generate renewable energy.

SCS says Luken’s accomplishments include:
• helping more than 20 cities and counties throughout the United States comply with waste regulations, reduce city collection costs, or generate support among parties to institute recycling programs;
• establishing the first integrated waste systems in three countries;
• reducing 25 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions with one city’s landfill gas project ; and
• designing a program for an international retailer to compost 9.8 million tons of food waste annually.

“Karen is an internationally recognized expert in strategic waste management, implementing local, national, and international programs successfully,” says Michelle Leonard, an SCS vice president and the current president of Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), Silver Spring, Maryland. “Her ability to deliver benefits to retailers, consumers, producers, and governments will provide value for our clients and encourage environmental solutions that will have a lasting impact.”