Tech News Entrepreneur Makes Her Case: Environmental Sustainability Is Inevitable

Peggy Smedley, whose podcast, publications and online TV channel foresaw many of today’s economic tailwinds, explains circularity’s evolving role.

BY SANDRA GUY

If you scan the Wall Street Journal each morning and express no surprise about the latest news that oil, auto, utility, retail and financial companies are going green, you’re ahead of the game. And you’ve likely been a faithful follower of Chicago-area podcast host Peggy Smedley and her Connected World and Constructech publications.

For 25 years, Smedley has presided over Connected World, Constructech and the Peggy Smedley Show, as well as the offshoot podcast and online TV channel. She has stayed ahead of the curve by interviewing experts and publishing spot-on, futuristic and exclusive technology news, covering topics such as AI (Artificial Intelligence), the IoT (Internet of Things) and digital transformation.

She’s an apt role model, too, since she focuses on male-dominated industries such as construction, automotive, manufacturing and infrastructure, to name a few.

Smedley’s podcast series has been listed among “the Five Best Internet of Things Podcasts You Should Listen To” and she is among insight.tech’s “15 IoT Influencers to Follow in 2021.”

So how has Smedley come to the conclusion in her latest (second) book that the key to America’s future is sustainability, whether that’s our seemingly improbable turnaround from a throw-away economy to one based on reusable goods, or from linear to more innovative design, or from a failing infrastructure to restored natural ecosystems?

“It’s hard to really grasp the magnitude of the confluence of forces that are creating this incredible disruption,” Smedley said. “Just think about the change that is impacting the world around us.”

After all, much of technology’s underpinnings — data centers, home computers, cloud computing and cryptocurrency mining, for example — hog energy.

Smedley, in her 200-page book, “Sustainable in a Circular World: Design and Restore Natural Ecosystems Through Innovation,” Specialty Publishing Media, 2020, https://sustainablecircularworld.com/, asks, in one of her many marvelously unique touchstones, ‘How do we go from a grey to a green economy?’

A transformation will require bridging the gap among Baby Boomers, Millennials and the younger generations, as well as companies setting Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) targets.

“For the first time in history, we have five generations working in society,” Smedley said. “Communicating and getting everyone on the same page requires a deep understanding of everyone’s view of sustainability. And that’s one of the biggest challenges because each generation views it differently. But we are seeing change.”

In fact, it’s not as impossible as it sounds.

Progress is just starting: Dell Computer uses about half of its energy needs from alternative energy sources and, with 154 other companies, has signed the American Business Act on Climate Pledge in 2015 under the Obama administration. The pledge’s aim is to halve their emissions, cut water use by as much as 80 percent and pursue zero net deforestation in supply chains.

HP Inc. has committed to eliminating 75 percent of single-use plastic packaging by 2025, and Microsoft has committed to cut its carbon emissions by more than half and be carbon negative by 2030, and, by 2050, to remove from the environment all of the carbon the company has emitted, either directly or by electrical consumption since its founding in 1975.

These companies’ aggressive tactics come in the wake of Accenture’s forecast that a “circular” economy — one that has decoupled economic growth from natural resource consumption while still driving competition — could return $4.5 trillion back to the economy by 2030.

“We have to have a restorative or a regenerative economy,” Smedley said.

The book backs up the imperative by explaining:

· The basics of sustainability, including business governance, the supply chain, the Paris Agreement, the Microsoft Way, stewardship across generations and the three pillars of an Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) investing approach.

· A look at the evolution of the way retail works, led by Amazon, including the Amazon effect, Prime showrooming, ship-it-my-way and one-click ordering.

· Case studies of technology’s evolution in mining, services, agriculture, construction and ‘smart’ cities.

“This is our one opportunity to turn to the young innovators for help,” Smedley said. “They have the experience and passion, and we must trust them to secure our world.”