As evolving technologies keep us hooked to new and updated gadgets, and Americans now own (according to the Environmental Protection Agency) an estimated three billion electronic products, one inconvenient question lurks constantly in the shadows:
What are we supposed to do with all of our old gizmos?
While responsible businesses and consumers want to recycle their outdated technology equipment – and often think they are – the reality of the electronics recycling business is an eco-horror show. Rife with misperception and abuse, the e-waste industry is notorious for cashing in on the good intentions of those who want to do right by Mother Earth and then delivering nothing but more problems for old mom.
Electronics recyclers claim that they’re lawfully disposing of electronics after stripping them of their hazardous contaminants. The ugly truth is that after charging exorbitant fees for collection, recyclers often send waste to countries like China and India, where rules are lax and dangerous materials are commonly dumped near farms or sources of drinking water, or burned after the electronics are mined for reusable microchips, copper, and silver. Because circuit boards are fireproof, the workers who burn or smelt down electronics just end up carbonizing the circuit boards and creating more emissions, then filling up landfills with the residuals. This isn’t exactly what most people have in mind when they think “green.”
Enter Materials Conservation Company (MCC), an e-waste company that prefers to think of its mission as recovering materials rather than recycling end of life electronics. Using a proprietary mechanical process, MCC safely reduces electronics to two new raw materials, rendering them into a metal concentrate or powder. The company then sells the metal to refiners, who employ an electrolytic system to make commodity grade metals, such as copper. The end result is that electronic equipment – the toughest material to recycle – is 100% reutilized.
Think of it as a reverse Amazon, but instead of ordering products and putting them into a cart, you put products you already have into a cart. That cart comes in the form of collapsible reusable containers that are sent to businesses by MCC, then picked up from company loading docks within 48 hours after being prepared to ship to regional centers. Recycling partners disassemble the electronics, the scrap is sold to scrap channels, then the circuit boards and wiring are sent back to MCC where the processing begins to extract the metals to be reused in other ways, and recycles the circuit boards into an epoxy resin for use in waterproofing.
Did I mention that the cost of this to businesses and consumers is $0?
“Over the course of several years, we have developed a unique business model that takes our proprietary technology processing combined with eCommerce software, and leverages it with the existing physical infrastructure,” explains founder Michael Burney. “We work with existing companies to handle the logistics and disassembly so that we don’t add trucks to the world, we generate no emissions in processing, and the only consumable is electricity. The whole process is designed to be efficient.”
Most businesses do their recycling based on depreciation schedules; only when a piece of equipment is fully depreciated (aka broken) do they recycle, and they do this by paying waste companies significant sums for retrieval. MCC offers a different model, where all locations of a company have pre-arranged access, the cost to the business is free, and organizations are provided with reporting on their materials. And all of this is done sustainably.
MCC’s main competitor? The trash industry, a business that thinks in terms of tonnage. According to the EPA, 2.37 million tons of electronics were ready for end-of-life management in 2009, but only 25% were collected for recycling. The rest of that tonnage went to landfills or was exported, where most of it will not be reused or recycled.
Earth Day may have long come and gone, but Causecast salutes companies like MCC that are thinking of the earth every day, innovating ways to nurture our planet back to greater health and pave a greener path for the future.
Contact Causecast now to learn how we can help you have a positive community impact simply by disposing of your electronics in a sustainable way.
Women have gained so much ground over the past fifty years that it can often seem that they’ve arrived at a place of equal opportunity.
They haven’t.
Today, less than five percent of the world’s heads of state are women, and women make up just nineteen percent of representatives in parliaments worldwide. Despite producing more than forty percent of the world’s food, women own less than one percent of the world’s farmland.
At a speech before the U.N. last year, President Obama challenged heads of state to break down the economic and political barriers to women’s equality. Responding to this call, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton launched the Equal Futures Partnership, a coalition of countries committed to removing barriers to political participation and economic advancement of women in their respective countries. The U.S. announced a number of commitments to further the goals of the partnership, and key among them was advancing women in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.
A handful of private sector organizations whose work highlights how the U.S. is advancing its commitment to this mission were asked by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to participate in the Equal Futures Partnership. Amongst these select organizations, Causecast was invited to join the Partnership because of its ability to quickly launch cause campaigns and make it easy for corporations to engage their employees around cause. At the New York launch of the Partnership on September 24th, Causecast was honored to be one of approximately 10 private sector partners invited to the standing-room only event, which drew together founding members and distinguished diplomats from 12 other countries.
Causecast’s goal with its involvement with the Equal Futures Partnership is to make it easy for clients to support girls and STEM-related organizations through their employee giving and volunteering programs.
How does Causecast do this?
When it comes to girls and STEM, or any cause for that matter, the interest and willingness to help are in abundance. In short supply are the time and resources needed to set up, manage, and track meaningful opportunities to get involved.
This is where Causecast provides its secret sauce. The company’s technology and services offering removes, to the greatest extent possible, the transaction costs associated with these efforts. Our platform makes it easy to provide information about meaningful ways to get involved - be it through volunteer events, donations (monetary or in-kind) or fundraising. We have both a mobile and desktop offering so that employees may access the platform in the way that works best for them, and our concierge service works to find innovative nonprofits with sterling reputations for employee efforts to support. CTEq’s STEMWorks database serves as an ideal source of information for these efforts, and has helped Causecast to launch a ready-made campaign for the Partnership called GIT Inspired!, supporting girls in technology and STEM fields. The campaign is available to any company that uses the Community Impact Platform, and Causecast will be working with its clients to adopt or develop initiatives that make the most sense for their organizations.
Causecast’s VP of Product, Kate Stahnke, chairs the Employee Engagement committee for CTEq, and is also the point person for Causecast’s involvement with White House’s Equal Futures Partnership. “I’m excited on a number of levels that Causecast is committed to girls and STEM,” notes Kate. “As a senior technology executive, I’m keenly aware of how the shortage of girls in STEM affects the shortage of technical talent as a whole in this country. As a STEMinist, I strongly believe that STEM skills afford women an opportunity to create rich professional lives. As an American, I believe that advancing economic opportunity and political participation of women is among the most efficient ways to ensure our long term peace and prosperity. And as a Causecast employee, I’m proud to work for a company willing to commit significant resources to this cause – by way of its involvement with Change The Equation and now with the Equal Futures Partnership. That sense of excitement and pride is exactly what our platform works to foster in the employees of our clients.”
At the launch of the Equal Futures Partnership, a general theme of the event – echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – was that the efforts of the founding countries weren’t just the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do. This thinking perfectly summarizes why Causecast’s involvement with the partnership benefits all of its constituents: the girls it hopes to support in STEM learning; the companies it hopes to galvanize towards unique corporate philanthropy and employee engagement efforts; and the employees of these companies whom it hopes to rally around the issue of STEM education.
Your employees want to perform community service; they really, really do…but amidst their busy schedules they just can’t seem to find the time.
So how about making volunteering easier than ever by offering virtual volunteer opportunities? It’s just one more tool that savvy companies are using to sharpen their employee volunteer programs, and by extension, their overall corporate philanthropy complexion.
Online or “virtual volunteering” allows people to help non-profits in a variety of ways, from web design and social media strategy, to translation, accounting, research, data entry and a host of other needs. This kind of skills-based volunteering allows virtual volunteers to contribute as much or as little time as they can, all from the convenience of their computers or smartphones. When employee volunteerism includes online opportunities and fundraising, your employees can effortlessly donate their time and talents.
Bringing Global Support to Local Nonprofits
Overcoming geographic boundaries and time constraints, virtual volunteering connects volunteers of various backgrounds, skills and cultures that may not be available locally to a charity, thereby enhancing an organization’s resources. The hope is to also mobilize additional support as virtual volunteers learn about a non-profit and the people it serves. In turn, volunteers can share this information with their companies and communities, creating a network of support.
You’ve got would-be volunteers who aren’t web wizards? No problem. If volunteers can read, write or do math, technology can help them tutor a child without even leaving their desks.
For example, Innovations for Learning, Inc. (IFL), an Illinois nonprofit that develops innovative technology to supplement reading and math instructional programs for K-2 classrooms, offers a web-based tutoring program that remotely pairs tutors and students. “Tele-tutors” talk to students over the phone while sharing a mutual screen on their respective computers, where they can read stories, work on word activities and do homework together. All of their work is integrated with the classroom instruction, and the tele-tutors are seen as an extension of the teacher while providing individualized attention to each student. Since no travel is involved, more time is spent working one-on-one with each student, allowing for convenience and flexibility for the tutor. Because of tele-tutoring, teachers have reported improved student performance; students look forward to their weekly virtual appointments and are motivated to work as they anticipate the call from their tutor.
Micro-Volunteering Makes it Even Easier to Contribute
Even if your employees only have ten minutes to volunteer, there’s an app for that. Using a touch of a button on your smartphone, you can “micro-volunteer” by doing simple volunteer projects in small increments of time. While they’re waiting for the bus or sitting in a boring meeting, your employees can be doing volunteer work.
Micro-volunteers are generally not required to undergo a screening process nor do they need to make a specific time commitment. Besides donating money, an example of micro-volunteer work is helping a museum add tag words to the tons of images in its database to help them be searchable for future use. By crowdsourcing the task of tagging the photos to micro-volunteers, the museum can catalog a greater number of photos without the expense of paying staff.
Companies such as cause integration leader Causecast make it easy for businesses to get their employees volunteering online. Causecast’s Community Impact Platform helps companies promote virtual volunteering opportunities within an online volunteer and giving platform, to make volunteering as accessible as possible for busy employees. And if the charities that a business wishes to support don’t offer virtual volunteering, Causecast will help those nonprofits develop online volunteer opportunities or source other nonprofits that can be supported through online volunteering.
So apply some strategic philanthropy to your corporate giving. Let your employees know that they can hop on their computer or phone, get to work, make the planet a better place and feel good about themselves. But carving out the time…now that’s the part only they can do.














I’ll
Companies like financial services firm