TBGP #2.5: A tonne of electronic waste and some clean up
This is not a full post of The Big Green Picture, but a housekeeping post regarding this newsletter, its format, and an apology for not having a post on Saturday, June 13.
For better decisions towards sustainability, we need to be better informed. To be better informed, we need narratives with depth that present facts with context. This is lacking today.
The Big Green Picture is a punt towards this. It looks to offer a better understanding of shifts towards sustainable development, a reality that requires more than a newsletter, through deep-dives explaining current trends, cases, and models, dedications to good and bad policy, and bite-sized interesting pieces I’ve come across in the last 14 days.
HOUSEKEEPING
A tonne of electronic waste and some clean-up
A bit less than one tonne of electronic waste (Source: Muntaka Chasant, wikipedia.org)
Edition #3 of The Big Green Picture was supposed to cover an alternative model of economic measurement linked to John F. Kennedy and a pastry.
More importantly, it is a model that can define the progress and success of a city, region, or country on a longer-term lens by measuring against ecological ceilings and socio-economic foundations, instead of just the financial focus of the GDP.
Turns out I will not be able to do that.
The first reason is my day job and the snapshot below.
(Source: A screengrab from my laptop)
I’m helping a startup in the electronic waste (e-waste) management space get to investment readiness. Opportunities like that highlighted are a flag for the “sustainability is good business” corner. E-waste, on its own, potentially offers 62.5 billion reasons aside from more present positive impacts of lowering pollution, GHG emissions, formalising the informal sector, and creating value from waste. There’s a lot to do in this space, and it shows in the time it has drawn from me these past couple weeks.
The second reason is last week I got connected to a person connected to that first real-world application of the above economic model. On-ground insights are valuable but they take time, as do interview schedules. I’m quite excited about the initial conversations I’ve been having, and hope to do justice to it in a future edition.
A full and proper deep-dive Edition #3 of The Big Green Picture will be up on Saturday morning IST, June 20, and it is all about your behaviour and how we can influence it to be more sustainable.
(Source: lifehacker.org)
Hint: It’s not with a stick.
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(Yes this won out for me in the A/B test)
EXPERIMENT #2
Feedback-driven development
Carrying on with running experiments to figure out what works, I remember a masterclass from Krish Subramanian, the CEO and co-founder of Chargebee, on feedback-driven development from customers / consumers to build software.
A newsletter is slightly less complex than a subscription management software sold globally, but there is a lot to draw from.
There was a lot done right with TBGP #2, but taking a repeated feedback that the edition was too long and the 3 sections a bit disjointed, here’s a new approach to The Big Green Picture:
A deep-dive commentary into one topic every 2 weeks, which can vary a few days (like this edition).
A digest of smaller pieces in between, around a policy perspective and useful small nuggets around data and facts
I did get challenged to a duel at dawn (my first) for highlighting “Don’t own a dog” as a way to reduce your climate impact, but there’s not much I can do here.
If you have got an idea or issue you’d like to see explored, critique a conclusion or approach, challenge me to my second duel, or offer hacks for growing newsletter readership (wink wink), please do reach out. You are most welcome to connect on this and anything else about The Big Green Picture in any way that suits your fancy: comments on posts, social media, Whatsapp, 2.00 am calls.