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Homeboy Industries Tour

On Friday October 12, GBCSC members toured the facilities of Homeboy Industries including Homebody Electronics Recycling and lunch at Homegirl Café.

Homeboy Industries (HBI) was founded 31 years ago by Father Greg Boyle to help gang members in the 80’s to turn their lives around and enter back in to society by giving them jobs, resources and a purpose. Their Jobs not Jails philosophy involves putting the “homies” to work, paying them to get off the streets, and never giving up on them- even if they reoffend. HBI is an 18 month program that goes through phases. First, participants work on themselves with resources like counseling, tattoo removal, tutoring, meditation, financial advice and more. Then they are trained in one of the industries where they then become full time employees.

Group Photo

Homeboy Recycling (HBR) focuses on IT Asset Disposition & E-Waste Solutions with a Social Mission. HBR staff can assist with gathering, packing, and palletizing equipment for shipment to HBR processing facility. They also have a portable shredding service to shred hard drives on-site for customers. They provide certified destruction, wiping of hard drives and screens, tests, repairs and re-market reusable equipment when possible (and if permitted by customers). HBR is currently partnering with HP to further their E-Waste recycling efforts. The first ever International E-Waste Day was held on October 13, 2018.

Elisa Varela from HP presented on HP's sustainability approach, which includes a partnership with Homeboy Electronics Recycling. Her presentation is available here. Some highlights from her presentation included HP's plastic bottle recycling and community outreach/employment program in Haiti, active since 2016. The program works to providing workers with educational, training, and healthcare opportunities combined with purchasing recycled ocean bound PET plastic to manufacture new HP print cartridges. Through this effort, HP is driving a more inclusive circular economy by opening up markets for collected plastic.

Other efforts HP is making to design for the environment include:

  • manufacturing 3.8 billion ink/toner cartridges reusing 99,000 tons of plastic that has recovered cartridges, 86 million apparel hangers and 4 billion plastic bottles eliminating 1 million pounds a day from going to landfills

  • using 3D printing can save weight, costs and waste

  • utilizing straw pallets made in China (over 50,000 pallets made from straw since 2017 )

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