I'll digress briefly from the conversation about carbon emissions and delve a bit deeper into the larger scale environmental issues that will challenge corporations in the next 5-10 years. The regulatory environment relative to climate change is in flux. Companies will be affected by stronger environmental rules and regulations that will impact their operations in nearly every way. It will become obvious, as leading companies begin to outperform the laggards, that is in the corporate world's best interest to stay ahead of the regulations. Outperforming companies will have adopted sustainable business activities and will be selling their success to their competitors in the form of consulting services.
Priorities will include launching pilot projects to establish take-back systems for used electronic products; strengthening global collaboration on fighting illegal traffickers of such products; and promoting best practices through new technical guidelines.
Why not be ahead of the curve?
From another perspective, that of an employee of a company selling highly accurate and high quality instrumentation to the pharmaceutical industry among others, it is good to see citizens of that industry contributing toward a sustainable future.