Obituary for Professor Frank Roethel

We wanted to reach out to share the sad news that Professor Frank Roethel has passed away.

 

The truly heart-breaking news is, that Frank Roethel, one of the first PhD students at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS), longtime research professor and director emeritus of the Waste Reduction and Management Institute (WRMI) at Stony Brook University, passed away March 26 at the age of 76. He was extremely busy working on an important project to make waste sustainable in Long Island and suddenly he stopped responding.

His character becomes clear in "Urgent Long Island trash study headed up by veteran Stony Brook researcher” (source Long Island News at wshu):

"In 2020, Roethal was a member of the Town of Brookhaven Ad-Hoc Committee for Solid Waste Disposal, which was exploring whether the landfill should expand the area where 350,000 tons of waste that is burned into ash is deposited annually. …  Roethel questioned if hauling the town’s 220,000 tons of municipal solid waste off Long Island was an "environmentally sound strategy… He argued that methane gas generated by disposing in a landfill is over 20 times more detrimental to the environment than carbon emissions from burning trash. He could not support the town sending municipal solid waste to "some distant landfill,” instead of burning the garbage at a waste-to-energy plant locally.”

A colleague of him said, that Frank was an incredible person and a valued colleague.

We mourn for him.