Why Wall-E should matter to you

Who’s seen the movie Wall-E? You know, the tale of a loveable robot left behind on Earth to clean up humans’ messes while humans headed off on a cruise-style spaceship, gained a lot of weight, and forget how to communicate face-to-face?

Especially for a kids’ movie, Wall-E has a lot of satirical elements, but there is some truth in most of them – including the future-of-humanity example listed above. And poor Wall-E’s entire existence hinges upon tending to out-of-control human waste (Wall-E stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth-Class). And, considering how much time we spend at our jobs, a lot of that waste is workplace-generated.

If you haven’t had a chance to read my colleague Linda Tucci’s story on electronic waste, or e-waste, please take a few minutes to do so…it invokes Wall-E in a way that shows how frightening real that dystopian scenario could become if not for vigilance in proper disposal of computer equipment. The EPA estimates that 40 million computers became obsolete last year. Imagine how much that number will continue to grow. And imagine when you start throwing in cell phones and other mobile communications devices…and business-generated paper waste….

So, as a CIO, what are you doing to ensure that your organization is properly managing its waste, electronic and otherwise? And where should I be throwing away this plastic bottle, again?