If you haven’t seen it, please watch “The Life of a Strawberry” launched by The Ad Council and the National Resources Defense Council, a video depicting everything that goes into growing, harvesting, packaging and shipping strawberries so that they can make it to your table, or in this case, fridge, where they sit until mold begins to grow and then they’re tossed in the trash. It’s a moving concept and one that has stuck with me ever since I first saw it and I can’t help but think of electronics in the same way. Sure their shelf-life is much longer than a strawberry’s, however the effort, materials, water, electricity, fuel, labor and more put into the manufacturing of a new device certainly surpasses that of a strawberry.

Instead of tossing that device in the trash (which is never a good idea anyway!) get creative, find ways it can be useful even when it’s outlived its useful life with you. Donate gently used IT assets to a local charity or school, hand it down to a child for school or for personal use or turn it into an iPod to play music from. Regarding your company’s assets, find an ITAD that prioritizes reuse over recycling. Local recyclers may be inexpensive however they don’t prioritize reuse and often don’t adhere to the environmental standards that are necessary to truly protect the planet, and your brand.  Fun fact if it’s “FREE” they are very likely exporting that material.

While we’re at it, let’s get creative with reducing food waste as well! One thing I’ve done is started freezing scrap veggies so that I can make homemade veggie stock and I take other scraps to the neighbor up the road to feed her free-range chickens. I haven’t perfected the art of zero food waste but at least I’m extending the life of some of our scraps. And my kids still use our 1st Generation iPad (can you believe it!?) because of quick thinking before the iOS update, we have copies of their favorite shows and a few movies (this one had a lot of space) that they can still enjoy on long car rides.

Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading!

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