This blog was posted on behalf of Katia Goldmuntz, a localization project manager at Intel who coordinates software translations in more than 25 languages. Born in Belgium, she grew up speaking French and Italian while studying Dutch and English. Does chocolate count as a language too? In other words, she loves languages but above all she cares about the environment and being green. Today is America Recycles Day – and while we’re a global company, we are headquartered in Santa Clara, California, with more than half of our employee population here in the United States. All in all, we’ve recycled more than 75 percent of our waste over the past five years, which is good. But we want to do better.
My day job is localization project manager, but for the past month, through our Sustainability Development Opportunity Rotation program, I’ve been leading the communications side of the "We Recycle" initiative to get our solid waste recycling rate up to 90 percent. We’re doing well (89 percent last month!), but it’s been a journey to change peoples’ behaviors and help them protect the planet. And it’s about more than just a number, or a single day – it’s about helping people understand that there’s a cost to throwing things away.
So far this year, we’ve recycled more than 160 tons of paper, 1,250 tons of cardboard, 8,800 tons of wood, 9,800 tons of co-mingled fiber, and 11,800 tons of metal. That’s a pretty big deal to me.
How are you celebrating America’s Recycling Day?