Composed by Joseph Fiksel
Mike Long passed away on March 5, 2021. In typically humble fashion, Mike did not want a funeral, a fancy obituary, or any fuss. But his friends and colleagues remember him fondly as a constant source of good cheer and boundless imagination. His life and career deserve to be acknowledged because of the many individuals and communities that he touched and the contributions that he made in Ohio and beyond. He was dedicated to a vision of environmental progress and never stopped working to realize that vision.
Mike graduated from Ohio University with a B.S. in industrial and systems engineering and always embraced the holistic concept of “systems thinking” in his professional activities. He taught courses in solid waste management at The Ohio State University and enjoyed collaborating with many of the professors and students that he met there. He was appointed a charter member of the Advisory Board for the Ohio State Center for Resilience, which eventually became part of the Sustainability Institute. In this role, he helped to establish the Partnership for Industrial Ecology in Central Ohio (PIECO), under a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Mike enjoyed a long career in public service, including roles as assistant chief engineer of operations for the Ohio Department of Transportation and director of public utilities and aviation for the City of Columbus. In 1989, he became the founding executive director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO), from which he retired in 2007. He also served on Ohio’s Recycling and Litter Prevention Advisory Council and Solid Waste Advisory Council, was founder and president of the Organization of Solid Waste Districts of Ohio, and was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for MSW Management Magazine. In 2003, Mike received the National Leadership Award from the Solid Waste Association of North America.
Retirement was only a new beginning for Mike. Liberated from administrative duties, he worked as a consultant to many organizations, constantly advocating novel approaches toward beneficial waste recovery and alternative energy generation. Among other projects, he worked as a technical advisor to the Columbus Zoo, helping to develop their environmental sustainability strategic plan. In 2009, working with the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development, Mike co-founded the Ohio By-Product Synergy (BPS) Network, a collaborative group of company managers that continues to meet several times per year to discover and develop innovative ways of converting waste streams into useful materials or energy.