A global challenge like waste can only be solved through effective collaboration and open knowledge sharing. Our goal in sharing The 2014 be Waste Wise 30 – Individuals is to foster future collaborations and enhance collaborative learning within the global waste community.

Let us define what we’re listing here. Many people worldwide are putting enormous efforts towards improving waste management, but a very small portion of them are communicating about it online and on social media. We believe such communication and outreach beyond the waste industry’s boundaries is important to address the challenge. The social web has revolutionized business in the 21st century. Internet users now spend most of their online time using social media, and it is increasingly where people get the information that helps them form opinions and take action. To effectively engage a broad audience, influencers must share their ideas and insights on social channels. This defines the kind of influencers we’re listing below.

So, to find and connect you to leading thinkers and practical solutions to the global waste challenge as part of our mission to “use 21st century tools to bridge the waste solutions expertise gap worldwide”, we turned to our Waste Influencers Twitter list. Using our unique set of indicators, we analyzed the social media space, identifying people and organizations who are effectively sharing stories about the work they are doing, and insights about the waste industry. We call these our be Waste Wise 30 – Influencers using using social media to make connections, shape new conversations, and understand and create waste solutions.

be Waste Wise 30 – Individual Influencers

The be Waste Wise 30 – Individuals are ordered by their last name. Some of them are our Contributors and you can find their contributions by clicking on their photos.

How we found our Influencers

We started with our Twitter Waste Influencers list, which had 95 members on February 17, 2014. It has since grown by 35 members and currently has 130 waste influencers as of May 5, 2014. These 35 new influencers were not included in this analysis.

We looked at key metrics for all 95 members. Our goal was to choose influencers who had high content quality, content quantity, and social media popularity. We then created separate lists for individual influencers and influential organizations. The list of organizations will be published soon.

Specifically, we looked at four key metrics:

• Follower-to-following ratio on twitter – this is a measure of popularity, which reflects how connected, relevant or representative they are.
• Average number of tweets per day – this is one way to measure how active an account is.
• Social Authority score – this is a metric from Followerwonk that is highly correlated with the number of retweets an account gets. It measures quality of content shared.
• Klout score – this metric from Klout is highly correlated with follower counts on all social networks. It is another measure of popularity, but across all social channels.

Our Waste Influencers list is an ongoing effort to find the best in waste. You can contribute by tweeting suggestions to @bewastewise.

If you like playing with more data, please write to [email protected] or tweet to us @bewastewise. This data was last updated on February 17, 2014.

We look forward to increased collaborations in waste communications. You should look forward to The 2014 be Waste Wise 30 – Organizations and in-depth analyses of how and why our individual and organizational influencers are doing so well.