Mike Tannenbaum

We risk losing the lives we have made if we don’t take better account of nature.

We tend to think of the environment as a subsystem of the economy, but it is entirely the other way around. We are part of nature, not separate from it.

current biodegradable products can only decompose if they are sent to a special factory, where the temperature and humidity is specially controlled, and lumped together with other compostable plastics. (If those plastics are thrown into landfill and mixed in with other trash, it doesn’t matter if they’re compostable or not. They’re not going back i... See more

Unlike plastic, glass and metal (including aluminum) can be recycled infinitely without losing quality or purity in the product.

the easiest items to recycle are the products made from a single material.

without a market demand, those recyclables are almost useless; placing them in the recycling bin won’t make a difference if you can’t make money off of them. If the demand isn’t there, or the quality of the materials post-use is incurably dirty, they end up in landfill or incinerators.

Substitute constant chatting with less frequent summaries. Emma starts her week off by communicating a “top of mind” document to her team. Rather than pinging a team member when a non-urgent thought comes to her, she adds it to the document for the week ahead. She takes a similar approach with her boss, sending him “closing remarks” every Friday to... See more