Del Monte takes measure of sustainability progress

When he was 16, Eric Lundgren saw a landfill near his small hometown in northwest Washington, filled with brand-new products. Ever since, he’s been building businesses that try to stand between people and their most wasteful instincts. He started an electronics recycling company at 16. He went to prison trying to restore Windows on refurbished computers. He loaded up a junked BMW with used batteries to win a Guinness record for the longest single-charge electric vehicle drive, to make a point.  Now Lundgren is converting big, still-usable batteries from electric vehicles (EV) into backups for solar grids and other uses. If people aren’t going to use what’s right in front of them, he and his more than 100 employees will just have to do it for them. After our CEO Kyle Wiens toured the BigBattery plant in Chatsworth, Calif., and I talked to Lundgren about battery recovery, we came away with a whole new perspective on what you can do with a “used” EV battery.

For pervasive transparency,“semi-green” Instagram influencers must be taken with a pinch of salt and the bar raised for fashion activism 
A recent collaboration between Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede’s fashion label Lemlem and Swedish clothing brand H&M that dropped on Earth Day (April 22) was seen as antithetical by some. They saw Lemlem’s avowal to slow and sustainable fashion, its commitment to transparency and empowerment of the African supply chain in conflict with H&M’s fast fashion model.