Not many technical engineering leaders have a passion for leaving the world better than they found it, especially in an area where they consumed a lot of raw materials to make their life's greatest work.

Very few companies are doing more than lip service on the very difficult (sometimes impossible) task of dirty work to get recycled materials into the supply chain as a viable (and someday better) alternative than new raw materials from the earth.

This has so many implications if successful – you can compete with mining 1:1. It allows a company to handle disruptions in the traditional supply chain, etc. But, today this is hard to do and you often only see post-consumer recycled materials used behind-the-scenes (e.g. a plastic frame holding a non-essential chamber) or in packaging (e.g. bamboo ink, cardboard boxes without white paint), but it's rarely used in what the consumer sees (notable exception: The Google Nest Mini "fabric" is made from plastic bottles).

As more devices rely on batteries, we need to think about how we can start harvesting those materials for re-use ourselves and not just shipping overseas and closing our eyes. It's much more expensive to intentionally source recycled materials today and that is, unfortunately, a losing proposition for most manufacturers.

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https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/google-newest-nest...

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/04/18/apples-2019-envir...

user:	mymacbook
created:	May 20, 2013
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