California: Lead the Fight Against Single-use Plastic

RESEARCH BRIEF – The presence of a chief sustainability officer (CSO) increases a firm’s socially responsible activities and decreases its socially irresponsible activities….

Nothing lasts forever, so they say — gadgets included. These are usually traded in or discarded for newer and more advanced models. Such behavior, though, has a negative impact on the environment and our health. To address this concern, Globe’s E-Waste Zero program advocates for responsible disposal and recycling of electronic waste.  It provides a way for anyone to donate their old, non-working electronic devices. “Recognizing just how irresponsible and unsystematic disposal of e-waste can potentially impact the environment and our lives, we endeavored to proactively find and create more viable solutions that will curb the adverse effects of e-waste,” said Yoly Crisanto, Globe Chief Sustainability Officer and SVP for Corporate Communications.

As the European Union seeks to transition to a ‘circular economy’, the policy focus in 2021 will turn to products: how they are designed, and why so many seem to be made to throw away. The European Commission wants to transform the way we produce and consume products. And when an initial strategy to do so wasn’t delivering as much as hoped, the EU executive gave it another shot earlier this year. The ‘Circular Economy action plan 2.0’, unveiled in March, is a renewed attempt to change the way we produce, use and dispose of goods. Like its predecessor launched five years ago, it doesn’t contain hard legislation yet but instead sets a series of goals, like halving municipal waste by 2030, some of which will be translated later on in hard legal requirements. Main ideas include giving consumers a new “right to repair” for computers and smartphones, establishing green criteria for construction products, updating existing resource use indicators, and planning a Sustainable Product Policy Framework.