April 22, 1970.
Twenty million people took to the streets. Not organised by governments. Not funded by corporations. Driven by ordinary people who looked at their rivers, their skies, and their soil, and refused to accept what they saw.
That single day changed the world. Within a year, the United States had established the Environmental Protection Agency. The Clean Air Act followed. Then, the Clean Water Act. Decades of hard-won legislation, built not by administrations, but by an engaged, determined public that simply refused to stay silent.
Yet 56 years later, that progress is under extraordinary pressure.
For the second consecutive year, EARTHDAY.ORG has rallied the world under the same, urgent banner: Our Power, Our Planet.
Where 2025 called us to examine our energy systems and transition towards renewables, 2026 carries a sharper message. Environmental progress has never depended on any single government or administration. It has always been built and defended by people. By communities. By individuals who chose to act even when the institutions around them faltered.
"All those years ago, in 1970, we were ridiculously confident that we were going to win. We launched a genuine environmental revolution. We proved that an engaged public can be an unstoppable force."
—Denis Hayes, Organiser of the First Earth Day, Board Chair Emeritus
This Earth Day, we should all strive to regain that confidence.
For those of us working in electronics, the challenge is right in front of our eyes. It lives in our warehouses, our supply chains, and our procurement decisions.
In 2022, the world produced a staggering 62 million tonnes of e-waste—a figure forecasted to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030. Of that immense volume, only 17.4% was formally collected and recycled. The remainder ended up in landfills or informal dumpsites, leaching lead, mercury, and brominated flame retardants (BFR) into the soil and water of communities least responsible for creating them.
Agbogbloshie, Ghana—once the world's largest e-waste dumpsite—remains a sobering symbol of this reality. Men and women sort and burn discarded electronics from higher-income economies, inhaling toxic fumes to recover fractions of copper and aluminium. The air around them contains chlorinated dioxins at levels 220-times above safety thresholds.
This is not how we imagined the future of innovation. This is not how anyone imagined the future of innovation.
However, the electronics industry holds a unique power. We hold the power to choose differently.
At Component Sense, we acknowledge that sustainability is not a once-a-year conversation. It is rooted in every order we process, every component we redistribute, and every partnership we build.
Our business model was founded on a simple but powerful truth, observed by our CEO, Kenny McGee, during visits to global electronic manufacturers: enormous volumes of excess and obsolete inventory are discarded every year, not because they have no value, but because the infrastructure to redistribute them does not exist at scale. Component Sense was built in 2001 to change that.
We act as an intermediary between manufacturers with excess and obsolete (E&O) inventory and buyers who need those components. We keep E&O inventory in use, out of landfill, and out of the informal dumpsites that bear the true cost of our industry's waste.
To date, Component Sense has:
Saved over 55 million electronic components from landfills
Planted over 18,000 native trees worldwide through our partnership with One Tree Planted
Offset all carbon emissions through our partnership with DSV
Environmental progress is not made by governments alone. It is made by businesses choosing circularity over convenience. By procurement teams selecting redistributed stock over virgin components. By each of us refusing to accept that the true cost of innovation should be borne by those who benefit from it the least.
Our Power. Our Planet.
Join us on this journey towards a sustainable future. Read our Waste Manifesto or redistribute your E&O inventory today.