UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Edmund Dimalanta, the founder and chief executive officer of D&G Pacific, will speak at Penn State University Park on Nov. 13 in a lecture titled “From Trash To Treasure: Sustainability in the Philippines.”
The event will be held in the Grandfather Clock Lounge in Atherton Hall beginning at 6 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and registration is encouraged. The lecture is co-sponsored by the Schreyer Honors College, the Penn State Sustainability Institute, and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Twenty years ago, Dimalanta founded D&G Pacific, a company based in Makati, Philippines, which provides environmentally aware cleaning and waste management service solutions for the private sector. The longtime entrepreneur plans to share his experiences with students during Global Entrepreneurship Week.
“Sustainability, to me, is not a technical issue,” Dimalanta said. “It’s not a finance issue or a profit issue. Sustainability to me is about community, it’s about using resources that are existing and it is finding a solution to touch lives of people.”
Schreyer Scholar and civil engineering major Autumn Deitrick, who is organizing the lecture, met Dimalanta this summer during a trip to the Philippines to visit relatives and asked him to speak at Penn State. He also will be a speaker at the MIT Water Summit in Cambridge, Massachusetts in November.
“The motivation is to share experience, and share whatever resources I have,” Dimalanta said. “I realized the resources I have are not limited, because there’s too many people who want to make a difference in this life."
About the Schreyer Honors College
The Schreyer Honors College promotes academic excellence with integrity, the building of a global perspective, and creation of opportunities for leadership and civic engagement. Schreyer Honors Scholars total more than 2,000 students at University Park and 20 Commonwealth Campuses. They represent the top 2 percent of students at Penn State who excel academically and lead on campus.