About Us
Full Circle Environmental – a private environmental consulting firm based in Seattle, WA – has been providing creative and effective approaches to resource conservation on behalf of business and government clients for 30 years. We harness innovative solutions and unparalleled expertise to create impactful programs and cutting-edge policies toward a just, waste-free, and climate stable future.
How We Work
Full Circle thrives on collaboration and creativity, and consistently meets ambitious work goals. As a small firm, we offer all of our clients individualized attention and the chance to access our depth of knowledge and extensive experience in the field. We also draw on an extensive network of colleagues and contacts from around the country and the world.
Adaptable
Our small team is flexible and can adapt quickly to shifting priorities.
Playful
We care deeply about bringing a playful spirit to our projects and relationships.
Why Work With Us
Collaborative
Authentic relationship-building and deep collaboration is in our nature.
Inventive
Our team’s deeply rooted expertise is the foundation for creation and innovation.
Company History
Full Circle Environmental was founded in 1993 by David Stitzhal. What started in the late 1980’s as a chance, temporary position sorting garbage for Chemung County in New York State blossomed into a passion for waste (and resource conservation). When Seattle launched one of the first big city recycling programs in the early 1990’s, David saw an opportunity to create and support expanding recycling policies and programs in the region. Full Circle was born.
Over the years Full Circle’s team has grown and developed wide ranging subject matter expertise related to diverse environmental sectors, including water quality, hazardous waste, energy conservation, organics, and more. Our focus on product stewardship solid waste management has persisted throughout Full Circle’s history. The company has purposefully remained small and dynamic since its inception, which enables Full Circle staff to remain nimble and responsive, build long-term relationships with clients, choose projects that will have the greatest impact, and provide significant opportunities for employees to gain exposure and experience that will propel their own careers forward.
Our Team
We are a small and enthusiastic team focused on projects that positively impact the environment and the climate through policy and behavior change. We value continual learning, independence, and creativity.
We care about each other and the work we do, enjoy sharing our experiences and extracurricular passions with one another, and value the unique perspectives we each bring to the table. We enjoy a challenge, strive to be anti-racist, and value an intersectional approach to our work and lives beyond work.
David Stitzhal (he/him)
Co-owner & Lead Consultant
Eun-Sook Goidel (she/her)
Senior Project Manager
Adam Ellner (he/him)
Project Manager & Outreach Specialist
Laurel Stitzhal (she/her)
Co-owner, Business Manager & Project Consultant
Apollo
Chief Happiness Officer
Adam Ellner (he/him)
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Project Manager & Outreach Specialist
Adam brings expertise and enthusiasm for recycling, composting, and hazardous waste management to his outreach and technical assistance on behalf of multiple cities. With an eye toward creative ways to engage community members and achieve project goals, Adam also supports projects related to food waste, water quality, transportation, and behavior change in multifamily and commercial settings.
The team loves Adam’s humor, his masterful ping pong game, and his top-notch word play, not to mention his readiness to jump in and get things done.
Adam is a graduate of the interdisciplinary Earth Systems program at Stanford University, where he earned his B.S. and M.S. While on campus, Adam also worked directly for Peninsula Sanitary Service, Stanford’s waste hauler, to improve waste management operations in the university’s cafés, academic buildings, and stadiums. His passion for waste reduction and diversion was enriched early on by his time as a Recycle Corps intern with WM in 2015, where Adam engaged in hundreds of conversations with Puget Sound residents and businesses.
When not working, you can probably find Adam bicycling on a rural or mountain road just about anywhere in the region, that is, if he’s not home baking bread.
Eun-Sook Goidel (she/her)
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Senior Project Manager
Eun-Sook is an extraordinary trainer, skilled at conveying complex technical and procedural requirements and translating them into readily actionable recommendations. Eun-Sook has unparalleled expertise as a leader in environmental procurement. She has worked on projects at the local and national level for over 20 years and played a pivotal role in developing the first Executive Orders for environmentally preferable purchasing.
Eun-Sook works hand in hand with cities, states, and federal agencies as well as with collectors, processors, specifiers, and manufacturers. She brings a life-cycle perspective to all of her work, ensuring that purchasing choices reflect holistic, multi-attribute considerations. Her penchant for research and her track record, in developing innovative tools and resources, consistently drives innovation in management practices for carpet, paper, electronics and other commodities. Her work with the National Park Service and the Federal Network for Sustainability are particularly noteworthy.
The team appreciates Eun-Sook’s independence (as she usually works solo), as well as her laser focus and dedication to getting the job done right with unimaginable efficiency.
Eun-Sook earned her B.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, and her M.A. in International Economics & International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Beyond the workday, Eun-Sook takes great pleasure each week creating striking flower arrangements for a local nursing home on Bainbridge Island. Her dog Parker – also a volunteer – supervises.
David Stitzhal (he/him)
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Co-owner & Lead Consultant
David started his environmental career standing knee-deep in garbage when he designed and implemented what is arguably one of the nation’s first waste stream sorts in the late 1980’s. He was hooked, and a career was launched. The solid waste field quickly called on many aspects of his peripatetic academic experience, from biology to anthropology to city planning.
David founded Full Circle Environmental, Inc. in 1993. He currently serves on the Boards of UPSTREAM and the National Stewardship Action Council. Over the years, David has created a vast network of relationships with an array of talented colleagues across the U.S. He excels at bringing people and organizations together to achieve program and policy goals. David has helped lay the groundwork for conservation programs setting the trend for the nation, including pharmaceutical take-back, electronics product stewardship, and commercial sector recycling assistance. David is known for a creative and results-oriented approach that has led to a number of award-winning projects.
The team gets a kick out of “Stitz’s” stories of lore about the world of solid waste, told over homespun cocktails and served alongside his never-ending puns. His enthusiasm is infectious, as is his commitment to helping others grow and achieve their goals.
He earned his double major B.A. in Psychology and Sociology/Anthropology from Swarthmore College, and a Masters in Regional Planning from Cornell University.
Bursting out of the office “Stitz” loves to go on long runs along Lake Washington where he has befriended a caramel crow who often swoops in to say hello.
Stitz’s caramel crow friend
Laurel Stitzhal (she/her)
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Co-owner, Business Manager & Project Consultant
A founding member of Full Circle, Laurel has long kept things running smoothly behind the scenes. Whether focused on day-to-day operations, long term business planning, proposal writing, or project strategy and implementation, Laurel approaches work with a thoughtful, process-oriented eye. Laurel has a unique perspective, working both on the front-end and back-end of Full Circle. Her knowledge of the company’s inner-workings is unmatched, and usefully informs her work as a Project Consultant.
As a Project Consultant, Laurel dives headfirst into outreach, data collection, research, and public engagement. Whether providing technical assistance to a multi-family property or outreach to a dry cleaner reticent to convert from PERC to a less harmful dry cleaning process, Laurel thrives on building rapport, making a plan, and changing behavior. Laurel also manages and coordinates the invaluable and talented crew of professionals who help meet the company’s needs in bookkeeping, accounting, human resources, website, and IT support.
The team enjoys Laurel’s penchant for dress-up ping pong and her quirky insights from left field that crack things open and release potential.
Laurel earned her B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Swarthmore College. She earned her M.Ed. in Counseling from Seattle University. In her role at Full Circle, Laurel draws on myriad management skills honed during years as Regional Manager for Open Adoption and Family Services.
Outside of work, Laurel’s passion is hiking and backpacking in the Cascade Mountains where you’ll either find her swimming in an alpine tarn (regardless of the temperature) or with binoculars in hand (Laurel is an avid bird-nerd).
Apollo
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Chief Happiness Officer
With over a decade of experience in happiness strategy and playtime innovation, Apollo utilizes a variety of techniques – including tail wagging, hugs, tummy rubs, and more – to bolster the team and meet his weekly targets for bringing laughter and joy to all. Apollo has a perfect attendance record at Full Circle staff meetings and never hesitates to speak his mind. He eagerly awaits the growing number of in-person encounters with Full Circle staff, clients, and colleagues.
The team loves Apollo’s go fetch attitude.
Antiracism
In addition to our non-discrimination policy, Full Circle is committed to antiracism, defined as the policy or practice of proactively opposing racism, having zero tolerance for racism, and promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion. We commit to maintaining a work environment where all employees, consultants, clients, community members and stakeholders, regardless of gender identity, race, color, sexual orientation, language, national origin, religion, disability, or age, know they are valued. Further, as an antiracist organization, we will work to purposefully identify and discuss issues of equity, diversity, inclusion, and racism and the impacts they have on our business, the projects we manage, policies we help to develop, legislation we write, as well as their effects on internal and external stakeholders, and the greater community.
We acknowledge that while racism and discrimination can be unconscious, implicit, or unintentional, this does not excuse any racist behavior; and further, that identifying and acknowledging racism in ourselves, in others, and in societal systems is a critical step toward addressing it. In keeping with this it is important to note that the environmental movement has racist roots, not only based on the individual behavior of its early leaders and high-profile organizations, but also because many of the conservation and other efforts to protect the environment have been geared toward preserving whiteness and/or space that has been available primarily or exclusively to white People.
Similarly, despite the fact that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) disproportionately experience the negative effects of degradation to the environment, white led organizations have dominated the discussions about how to address these challenges and have used their privilege to access the funding streams available to do the much-needed work. Environmental justice efforts in comparison are largely led by people of color, whom have also been the most affected by environmental degradation and climate change, and yet have been unable to secure the same level of funding and support due to the systemic racism present in every level of our society, including within the environmental movement. Until people and organizations benefiting from white privilege begin to find ways to share their power this structural racism will persist and prevent equity, as well as effective solutions to the environmental issues that concern us all.
Full Circle is deeply committed to and will continue to purposefully discuss and deepen our knowledge, understanding, and commitment to antiracism. Enacting a culture of equity, justice, and inclusion is a priority at Full Circle, and we also recognize it is an ongoing learning process. We do not expect perfection, but we do expect a commitment to learning, an openness to feedback, and an alignment around antiracist practices within ourselves, within our company, and in the work we do in the world.