This year marks the 22nd anniversary of America Recycles Day (ARD). On this day, Americans celebrate by renewing their pledge to recycle.
Each year, as the Chamber Foundation hosts the Talent Forward national workforce conference, we focus on talent—educating and training, talent tech and data, recruiting, hiring, and upskilling. With no shortage of talent challenges, the opportunities for informative discussion are endless. While a day devoted to dissecting talent-related topics could focus solely on the problems, Talent Forward is all about the solutions.
The rapid increase in consumer awareness of plastic pollution has given way to a movement to ban or replace many consumer items that are made from plastic. We are seeing this everywhere—politics, media, and consumer preference trends.
Hyper-efficient buildings, circular clothing and fashion, sustainable manufacturing, eliminating food waste, innovation in energy—the Pittsburgh business community painted a perfect picture of what a system-wide approach to sustainability and a circular economy look like in action.
By 2021, shoppers in the U.S. alone will spend up to $150 billion on sustainable products, representing a quarter of all goods sold. Looking back from 2018 to 2017, sales of sustainable products grew by almost 6%, higher than their non-sustainable competitors.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were approximately 8.6 million STEM jobs in May 2015, with the highest jobs in software development, user support, and systems analysts. Despite the high number of jobs, the lack of skilled workers in the labor force allow these positions to go unfilled. To make matters worse, the existing STEM workforce lacks diversity among women and minorities, not representing the emerging workforce of women and underrepresented groups.
In honor of Earth Day, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is excited to share some of the latest initiatives and cross-sector partnerships aimed to steward the planet’s resources.
