If my title makes you think of Janet Evanovich, I hope it makes you smile. Smiling doesn’t always come easily these days for many of us committed to a sustainable and just world.
However, as I keep reminding my friends, the world is not flat, and no amount of bluster makes it so. And for a long time now, it’s the multinational corporations that have had the economic power to effect needed change. So, to remind us that there’s serious weight behind many sustainability agendas, I’ve chosen to highlight a few companies running full force into a renewable world.
E-waste is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world and it’s only natural to want to set goals to reduce it. Many organizations’ sustainability goals include waste reduction, and, as organizations often classify e-waste as solid waste, quantifying e-waste recycling to meet landfill avoidance targets makes sense, as far as it goes.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to teach a course in popular literature exploring how social change is reflected in book series. When prolific authors’ works span years, even decades, you can see how social issues emerge and attitudes change. Fewer protagonists smoke. Minorities take prominent positive roles. For more than a decade, climate change has insinuated itself into the works of best-selling authors. And now there’s e-waste.
October’s Sustainatopia in Boston will be my fifth Sustainatopia conference. I love this event, and look forward to connecting and reconnecting with others who are actively engaged in trying to effect change on so many interconnected fronts. Sustainability 101 teaches systems thinking, which promotes holistic thinking, a bringing together of different disciplines to create solutions that draw from knowledge often held in silos.
In case you haven’t noticed, the recycling industry is in trouble. I feel fortunate that although some folks think of us as electronics recyclers, we are emphatically not in the recycling business. Our mantra is “Reuse First” and we provide data security and environmentally preferable outcomes for the assets entrusted to us by our customers.
Two weeks ago in Paris, EcoVadis held its annual conference, providing content to both its customers and its global staff of analysts, those ultimately responsible for scoring companies across a spectrum of corporate social responsibility and sustainability criteria.
