A Seat at the Table

I was at the United Nations Office at Vienna and the European Parliament in Brussels in the past 7 weeks, and I have been looking backwards and forwards a lot as a result.

When I told people I was starting The E-Waste Column in 2022, common responses were: “Who is going to read that?”, “No one is going to read that.”, and “No one is going to care.” I started writing the column anyway and never gave up on the project.

Over time, the weekly column – which many people referred to as “a fun little side project” in its first few years – branched out into a monthly newsletter and an e-learning platform. Within the first two years alone, I went to speak to students and professionals in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany about our work. Last year, we then reached upwards of 47 000 people with our column alone. We also launched The E-Waste Learning Hub, which now has over 140 short-format learning modules.

Tomorrow, we are publishing our 190th weekly column. That is literally only possible because I have written the column throughout all the highs and lows of this journey. I have written the column at 1AM, when work got too busy. I have written it in trains, bus stations, and airports while travelling. I have also written it through periods where I lost family members or got other news that no one would hope to get. And crazily enough, I even continued to write throughout the two times that I thought we would have to shut down our whole project due to a lack of funding.

Week after week since September 2022, my hope has always been to democratize the space, so that one day everyone could understand why electronics circularity matters so much for our democracies and sustainable development. Throughout all of this, I have always dreamed of a world where the voices and innovations that could reshape the narrative around e-waste would get a seat at the table – independent of gender, heritage, or socio-economic background.

I can say from experience that you do not see a lot of (young) women at the table when it comes to raw materials, electronics, or energy – and that there is a fair amount of hate and mansplaining that happens too. That is why I am incredibly grateful to UNIDO, European Female Founders, HER FUND Project, SCALE'HER project, and MEP Tsvetelina Penkova for giving me a seat in rooms, where what I had to say was heard, both at the:

🇺🇳 first Global Stakeholder Workshop of the Global Electronics Management (GEM) Program on February 5th and 6th, and

🇪🇺 Women Who Build Europe: European Female Founders Summit on March 17th.

Perhaps my dreams are a bit crazy but, despite everything going on in the world right now, I continue to believe in creating:

🌐 a world where anyone can understand why electronics circularity matters and what they can do to contribute to accelerating the circular economy and the energy transition, and

📢 an EU market where female and minority founders can access funding and be heard, even in heavily male- and majority-dominated sectors.

If you would like to support us in our mission, you can do that by buying or donating an annual membership here or making a direct donation here.