Steve Britt

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…

Stay up to date on all the latest conversations, interviews, and episodes we released this week here at Supply Chain Now! We started this week off with an episode of Supply Chain Now as Scott Luton chats with Lora Cecere and Dr. Madhav Durbha, Vice President of Supply Chain Strategy for Coupa Software. In Monday’s episode of This Week In Business History, Scott Luton talks about the history and development of video games- from the origins of Atari to the companies that are currently dominating the market. On Tuesday, we republished a classic TEKTOK episode with host Karin Bursa. In this episode, Karin shares six strategies for greater supply chain resilience. On Wednesday’s Supply Chain Now episode, Scott had a great conversation with culture expert, author, and speaker Ray Attiyah with Run Improve Grow. Scott and Ray talk about the key points in his new book, Fearless Front Line: The Key to Liberating Leaders to Improve & Grow Their Business. On Thursday, we released another episode of Supply Chain Now with host Scott Luton and special co-host Allison Giddens. Scott and Allison welcome Chad Molen with NIMBL, and Dan Reeve with Esker to the show. On Friday, we released the…