There is a lot of positive energy flowing at Day 2 of Rio +2.0 on the campus of Stanford University. The opening keynote, U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, may be right in her comment that there is more technology in our auditorium than the early days of the U.S. space program. As I look around I see public officials from all over the world on a technology device - sometimes two! - and I think to myself how much positive change technology has brought to the world since the first Earth Summit 20 years ago, change that has allowed us to more easily connect people to solve problems and create new opportunities. Administrator Jackson then reminds us that all of this technology eventually has an end of life and that we all have some responsibility to the planet to do the responsible thing when that does occur. She said that the U.S. EPA is determined to find solutions to a growing problem and noted that many companies are doing their part by safely reusing and recovering these electronic materials. At HP, we began recycling hardware in 1987 and have recovered 2.3 billion pounds of products for reuse or recycling since then. In 2010, we manufactured over 310 million HP LaserJet and ink cartridges that contained content from our “closed loop” recycling process. We are doing our part to help but cannot do it alone. For more information on how you can help, please visit our recycle reuse site.

O.K., enough about HP and asking for your help to recycle your used equipment, back to Rio +2.0….I had a very interesting lunch with the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment. He invited HP to participate in the third meeting of the U.S. Department of State’s Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society, launched in February 2011 by Secretary of State Clinton.  The Undersecretary chairs one of its three working groups—on governance and accountability—which brought together experts in the field from business, academia, and civil society.  The discussion included experts from Intel, The Ford Foundation, NRDC, MIT, and many others. Our discussion explored ways connection technologies (e.g., the Internet, SMS, and mobile phones) can help advance good governance, transparency, and accountability in the context of sustainable economic growth. We gave our thoughts on how the State Department can help empower civil society actors to feed grassroots information into government and business processes to achieve our shared sustainable development goals. Watch the video to learn more about the Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society. I’m off to soak up some more of this positive energy to move forward and a little California sun while I’m at it.