John Shegerian

written by Deborah Dull, on site at GreenBiz 2026   I spent today in a room full of people who think about waste for a living. And the word that kept coming up had nothing to do with recycling. It was sovereignty. Here is the situation. The United States imports 95% of its critical mineral supply. Lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements, the stuff inside every battery, every semiconductor, every electric motor. We do not make it, we do not mine much of it, and we do not control the supply chain that delivers it. That is not an energy policy problem. That is a national security problem. Now here is the part that should make you put down your coffee. A ton of smartphones contains dramatically more gold than a ton of mined ore. We are talking about concentrations that make urban mining look like a gold rush compared to digging in the ground. And yet the recovery rate for those materials, once a phone leaves its first owner, drops to around 13%. We are losing roughly 80% of the value sitting in devices right now, in drawers, in closets, in landfills. E-waste is also the fastest growing waste stream…

Your TMS and ERP aren’t enough. Despite billions spent on supply chain tech, most teams still run on PDFs, spreadsheets, and email threads—creating manual chaos that slows everything down. This eye-opening white paper reveals how top supply chain teams are using an invisible layer of AI to streamline operations—no dashboards, no extra headcount, no noise.   Download now to learn how to eliminate manual bottlenecks and give logistics teams their time—and sanity—back. Uncover the hidden gems – Manual workflows waste hours and create delays. Learn how to fix it fast. See real results – Cut shipment intake from 30 minutes to 10 seconds, without new tools or extra headcount. Discover smart automation – Learn how to turn messy emails and PDFs into structured data that flows seamlessly into your systems.   Ditch manual chaos and see how an ambient back office that never sleeps can save your team thousands of hours, eliminate costly errors, and unlock the true potential of your supply chain.   Download the white paper here to learn more