After 31 Years of Recycling, Earth Day is a Lifestyle

As Earth Day 2008 grew near, someone happened to ask me my thoughts about the annual holiday. I had to admit that since I’ve been working in the e-waste recycling industry for 31 years, it’s hard to get too excited about Earth Day any longer. For me and many others, every day is Earth Day.

On the other hand, the annual celebration does provide some general awareness about our industry, so that’s certainly not a bad thing. After all, in the early days of my career, people in my position were considered so secondary to the main priorities of our organizations that we weren’t even invited to routine company staff meetings. So it does give me more than a little satisfaction that environmental responsibility has now seeped into the general consciousness in a way I probably never could have predicted, and Earth Day helps.

In 1980, I walked into a plant that recycled used batteries. It had been built in 1932, and still had the pollution control equipment of that era. But it also happened to be located in the Los Angeles area, which has always had more stringent pollution regulations than the rest of the country. I convinced management to provide me with the tools to get more serious about better addressing the environmental impact of what we did, and all these years later, other challenges continue to engage me.

While plenty has changed over the years, much has remained the same. Companies are still caught between a rock and a hard place—trying to be environmentally responsible, but also subject to the competing demands of their market and the practical limitations of using certain materials.

The increasing sophistication and variety of plastics (and toxins) used in all products, including electronics, has only made our work that much more challenging. So too is the fact that OEMs for the most part have become assemblers of components supplied by contractors, which makes their challenge to be environmentally responsible that much tougher. It also focuses increased attention on the quality of their entire supply chain.

Earth awareness has provoked change in my personal life, as well. The last vehicle I purchased was an Ultra Low Emission Vehicle. Actually, it’s a Practically NO Emission Vehicle, according to California air-quality regulators, so old environmental dogs can indeed be taught new tricks. Furthermore, these days, I do get invited to staff meetings with my Redemtech colleagues. So by that barometer and many others positive indicators, we’re indeed making progress.