Archives
A Sustainability Portrait of McMinnville, Oregon
McMinnville is the county seat of Yamhill County, Oregon. The 2020 census reports that it has 34,000 residents. It is in the heart of wine country about an hour southwest of Portland, and an hour east of the Oregon shore. No freeways pass anywhere near. I prepared the following sustainability profile of McMinnville in anticipation […]
Inputs Needed for a Regenerative Future
Regenerative approaches aim for complete systems changes that address the root causes of our climate crisis and other global crises (they are all connected). The goal is to create the conditions for all life to thrive, generating self-sustaining positive outcomes for nature, people and the economy. Regeneration offers a bold vision of the future we […]
Right to Repair: the First Step in Solving eWaste
As businesses navigate the landscape of technological innovation, it’s crucial to explore the intricate connections between eWaste, business growth and the imperative of embracing the right to repair. It’s difficult to talk about topics like eWaste and sustainability from the corporate or IT perspective without sounding preachy on one hand or self-serving on the […]
A Better Way Forward for the IT Industry and All of its Stakeholders
“Businesses need to transform… be skeptical of business as usual. There needs to be a movement. There has to be a better way. Crew consciousness is the shift we need.” – Tomás O’Leary, CEO and Founder, Origina By forcing customers to migrate to the cloud or risk losing support and security updates, tech vendors […]
Oregon Reduces eWaste with Right-to-Repair Bill
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed into law the newest and toughest right-to-repair act in the U.S. This is the fourth such state law in the country, and it goes even further than California’s, in particular by resisting Apple’s lobbying to ban the use of “parts pairing” to hinder independent repair services. Parts pairing is […]
Corporations can help address e-waste, but the culture must change first
How can we change a corporate IT culture that encourages B2B buyers to solve every problem with a new purchase instead of improving or simply maintaining the software or hardware they’ve already invested in? Chief technology officers are faced with a difficult dilemma worldwide. They understand and acknowledge the environmental damage caused by filling […]
The Necessity, Responsibility and Right to Repair
I have three functional and operational VCRs. I understand that this opening statement is not something one could, or should, normally brag about in the world of digital streaming, but the VCRs work. And I have dozens and dozens of VHS recordings that I still enjoy. I will also confess that three of the five […]
Less is More: Quality Not Quantity
I think a lot about our divisive societies and the constant war and strife around the world, while we absolutely must work together to solve our climate crisis. I don’t have the answer, but I think a sharing economy is a step in the right direction. Sharing Economy A sharing economy delivers the […]
The Right to Repair is Long Past Due
Every person reading this column lives in a consumer economy. A consumer economy is a linear process of extract/produce/distribute/sell/buy/discard. We live in a world where waste has been planned into the equation. There is no waste in nature. Waste is a design flaw unique to humanity. A consumer economy not only promotes consumption, […]
