Bill Shireman
As President of the non-profit Future 500, he invites Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network (RAN), ExxonMobil, Mitsubishi and other corporate and environmental leaders to work together to create the world’s first corporate supply chain standards for sustainable forestry (between Mitsubishi, RAN, and then 400 other companies), the most effective beverage container recycling program (the California CRV deposit system and its progeny), and the 2008 agreement by both Greenpeace and Exxon-Mobil to support precisely the same federal tax on carbon, which went absolutely nowhere.
Bill has been a lifelong climate advocate and was integral in design and passing the California “bottle bill”. This legislation brought together an unlikely coalition in the form of Coors, Safeway and the Sierra Club. With his guidance, they created the country’s most cost-effective recycling law by EPA and academic studies. Since enacted in 1987, more than 362 billion beverage containers have been recycled, including more than 10 million tons of aluminum, glass and plastic containers.
Bill explains using the power to drive change with his bother, Bob Shireman.
So others can take up where he eventually leaves off, he teaches leadership and negotiations at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School, and serves as a surrogate founding father of BridgeUSA, where young progressives, conservatives, libertarians, and independents all register decline-to-hate, and engage in democracy by listening, speaking, learning, teaching, and then solving problems together.
Professor Shireman is a prolific author. His latest book, “In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, and Activists are uniting to tackle climate change and more” is out for purchase or download now. Other books that he has authored include: “Innovation Nation”; “Engaging Outraged Stakeholders”; and “What The GOP Can Learn From Nike”. He also partnered with former Mitsubishi CEO Tachi Kiuchi to write “What We Learned In The Rainforest – Business Lessons From Nature”, which was featured in the Harvard Business Review.
