Positive Power of Principled Profit
Volume 5, Number 3—November, 2007

Positive Power Spotlight: GreenDisk.com

Reasonably priced, environmentally responsible, data-secure service for getting rid of techno-junk. I'd try Freecycle.org first, since my junk may be someone else's treasure—but this looks like a good fallback.

The FAQ page notes,

We refurbish what we can and recycle the rest. Inkjet cartridges get remanufactured and, when possible, cell phones and some computers get refurbished. Material that has no further operating life is broken down to its smallest components (metals, plastics, etc.) and used in the manufacturing of new products. Unlike some recycling companies, all of the material that GreenDisk collects is reused or recycled. No hazardous materials or obsolete components go overseas to be processed or disposed of.

It also discusses the risks of improperly-disposed, insecure data, and the steps it takes to eliminate that risk.

And this is a socially responsible company that chases away business if there's a more eco-friendly solution available:

You should not use GreenDisk if there is a local drop-off that legitimately recycles your equipment. We believe this service should be offered in your local area to conserve energy and be more cost effective. Unfortunately, businesses in most local areas have not stepped forward. So, we started this service at the request of those who had no local vehicle to recycle their equipment.

I find the information on GreenDisk's About page very cool: the firm was founded on Earth Day, 1993, originally to help software companies dispose of unsold software. With its commitment to sustainability, GreenDisk went around forming partnerships with existing recyclers—and with nonprofit agencies that employ workers with disabilities—around the country, rather than building new capacity.

Materials that Greendisk recycles are turned into Green office products: Diskettes and CD-RWs, CD packaging, technotrash collection stations (how's that for a closed loop!). I had to wonder, though—who's actually still buying diskettes?

In fact, I wondered enough that I picked up the phone. It was answered on the first ring by none other than David Beschen, President and Founder; he says all six employees answer the phone. I asked who buys floppies these days. It turns out the military and other government agencies still buy them—and NASA even still buys 5-1/4 inchers.

For up to 30 pounds of non-computer "technotrash," e.g., CDs, cords, mice, cell phones, and printer cartridges, just $6.95. Disposal of entire computers, including wiping the data beyond recovery and recycling what components can be recycled, starts at $19.95. The largest job the company handled filled 26 railroad freight cars; the smallest was a single DVD. Rechargeable batteries are acceptable; alkaline, unfortunately, are not—but the company is working on it. "It isn't that they can't be recycled, but that it's extremely expensive," Beschen told me. "But we're working on that."

Since I had him on the phone, I conducted a brief interview:

SH: How do you get people not to just throw electronic parts away.

DB: There's a huge segment that does want to recycle, and we make it more convenient. They just don't know what to do with the stuff. We're not missionary with people who don't want to recycle, but the general conversations are starting to bring more people to realize [that proper disposal is important]. If you go back in our culture, we didn't throw stuff away. Planned obsolescence is a relatively recent, and that mentality is changing. We have cars now that don't need a tune-up for 100,000 miles, instead of rusting hulks in a junkyard.

SH: How are you different?

DB: One of the key rules of environmentalism is don't make it [if you can use something already in existence]. We use resources already in existence, including postal trucks that would otherwise come back empty. We've asked nonprofits that employ people with disabilities [to do the work]; they have 70 percent unemployment: those are two huge resources. Now we've integrated FedEx, and less-than-load tactics with all the trucking companies, so we can move stuff without making a special trip. And we can get work done without taking it offshore. To make the diskettes, we bought down-time from people who make the software. And companies will pay a premium for recycled materials.

SH: Is this type of cooperation unusual?

DB: I'm the former head of corporate communications for Microsoft. The software producers were doing all kinds of joint ventures, sharing information that marketing people would have killed each other for disclosing. I said, "do your marketing people know?" It wasn't a conspiracy, for once. I come from the marketing world. When you create a soluton for people, you're marketing. Companies that think only of themselves don't tend to perform well over time.

Another Recommended Book: Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee by Dean Cycon

You might remember fair-trade organic coffee roaster Dean Cycon of Dean's Beans from my profile of his company in the February, 2006 Positive Power Spotlight.

Dean's just come out with a fascinating book: Javatrekker: Dispatches from the World of Fair Trade Coffee.

Most Americans and Europeans in the coffee industry have never met a coffee farmer, and certainly haven't traveled to the remote indigenous communities where coffee is grown. Dean has traveled the world, meeting growers, processors, shamans, government ministers, bouncing his way down rutted goat trails, learning a few phrases of the local language (or what he thinks is the local language), getting stomach-sick on a regular basis—and having a great deal of fun. He often finds that not only is he the first coffee buyer to visit these isolated places, but often the first white man.

In the U.S., he spends a lot of time hectoring coffee executives at Starbucks and elsewhere to commit more to fair trade and to fund development projects—which he's able to accomplish for a tiny fraction of the money a large bureaucracy would need, by using methods initiated and designed by local communities using local resources to meet local needs, in the spirit of E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful.

He leaves a trail not only of Dean's Beans t-shirts and "Make Coffee Not War" bumper stickers, but a legacy of vast improvement in the lives of the villages he visits. Clean-water wells, education centers, community-owned coffee processing plants, simple hand-operated depulpers that allow coffee farmers to capture much more of the value of their crop...some of these are projects he funds directly, and others come out of the cooperatives' share of coffee profits, made possible by the fair-trade price he pays, sometimes three times as much as the "going rate."

Dean sums up his philosophy in the closing words of the book:

I have never been fully comfortable with what I, when I know in my heart that things can be better, more respectful, more loving, and frankly, more exciting. It pains me deeply to see cultures crumble and blow away under global pressures (or simply for lack of water), or kids' lives go unfulfilled for want of a pencil or notebook. Javatrekking allows me the vehicle to explore my own relationship to these things and to take responsibility where I can. These may be small contributions in the greater scheme of things, but as an old Indonesian farmer advised me..." Add your light to the sum of lights."

Dean has clearly taken that advice seriously. His many initiatives include forming the Coffeelands Landmine Victims Trust, which works in Central America and Vietnam, co-founding Cooperative Coffees, an association of 23 local coffee roasters around the U.S. and Canada who offer fair trade organic coffee, and simply funding scholarships for individual children of coffee growers in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea.

Dean Cycon is living proof that it is more than possible to use business as a force for positive social change, while at the same time see the world and have a terrific time.

Published sustainably on recycled paper by Chelsea Green (publisher of my own book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World), Javatrekker is full of well-told stories and includes some great color photos. It's available from Dean's Beans or from the publisher.