Bill Shireman: Building a Sustainable Economy

Growing up in the 1960s, Shireman was inspired by the struggles for civil rights, clean air and water, and an end to the war in Vietnam. He describes himself as “a quiet kid, but I absolutely felt that change needed to happen. And so that overwhelmed any timidity that I might have had.”

He became an entrepreneur at age 7, taking a 5¢ deposit on the cans of soda he sold so he could recycle the returns. In junior high, he created a political button company to support environmental candidates, and earned enough to help pay for college. In high school, his letters to the editor promoting recycling and opposing nuclear power were often published in Bay Area newspapers.

He also frequently engaged the physicist and nuclear power proponent Edward Teller at Teller’s Bay Area speaking events. Those discussions, he says, were lessons in talking with people on the other side of an issue and helped him realize that sometimes agreeing with them “wouldn’t kill you.”

While at the University of California-Berkeley, Shireman registered to vote as a Republican and joined the California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG) to campaign for California’s “bottle bill”. CalPIRG was launched by consumer crusader and business nemesis Ralph Nader. What might sound like a betrayal of Republican anti-regulation ideology was, to Shireman, the application of conservative stewardship on a wasteful industrial practice. The bottle bill, referred to in the news media as an anti-littering measure, proposed a 5¢ deposit on every retail container sold, which would become a tax if the bottle or can was thrown away rather than returned for recycling.

For Shireman, that concept exemplifies his view of government’s appropriate role in a free market. The government, he says, “should be taxing bads, not goods”. Pollution and waste are “bads”, he explains, while “income, profits, labor, jobs, wages, even sales” are “goods”.

At 24, Shireman became executive director of Californians Against Waste (CAW), which allied with CalPIRG and other groups to advocate for the bill. Over the next five years, he led the effort, working with his environmental allies, conservative businessmen, and Democratic and Republican legislators to craft a bill they all could accept. The bill became law in 1989.

Ten years later, he did it again on a global scale, bringing Mitsubishi and RAN to an agreement under which the company implemented more ecologically sound timber management practices and the environmental group ended years of consumer boycott and protests at Mitsubishi facilities and auto shows. Peter Asmus, a sustainability advocate, credited Shireman with “one of the most thought-provoking agreements ever approved by former corporate and environmental group adversaries.”

Shireman was literally flying high after that. In 2002, he and Tachi Kiuchi, chairman and CEO emeritus of Mitsubishi Electric America, published “What We Learned in the Rainforest: Business Lessons from Nature”, a book that begins with the two men stepping out of an airplane at 10,000 feet and relishing the rush of freefalling within view of Costa Rica’s Corcovado rainforest.

They used the skydiving image as a metaphor: Modern business, with its unconstrained appetite for the earth’s resources and the exhilarating profits they generate, must learn and apply vital lessons from nature about designing products for an efficient, waste-free life cycle to “stay aloft” for the long term.

Back then, the concept of a circular economy was just beginning to influence business. But politics in America had changed since Shireman first campaigned with CalPIRG. The red-blue divide was splitting the nation, and the sort of bipartisan collaboration needed to create the right market incentives was fast becoming a thing of the past.

Shireman experienced this first-hand: After brokering an agreement between Greenpeace and Exxon-Mobil to support a federal carbon tax, partisan maneuvering in Congress ended its chances in 2010.

That experience prompted him to turn his attention to bridging the partisan divide. Shireman became an integral figure at EarthX, the annual Dallas-based sustainability conference that attracts business and environmental leaders who, while often not agreeing on what solutions to pursue, share the objective of improving stewardship of the earth through profitable means.

With real estate developer Trammell Crow, founder of EarthX, Shireman published “In This Together: How Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists and Activists Are Uniting to Tackle Climate Change and More” in 2020. The book argued that the old adversaries in the battle over the planet – corporations on one side, environmental groups on the other – had become less relevant to the effort to curtail climate change than the media and political industries that thrive on conflict. The authors proposed a fundamentally different narrative:

“Declare an end to the war to save the planet,” they wrote. “Then collaborate to save it.”

Ever the bridge builder, Shireman leans into the notion that both political parties equally pursue and profit from conflict. History suggests otherwise, as we’ve documented elsewhere, and when pressed, Shireman acknowledges there are certain asymmetries. But accountability is not his goal. Rather, he seeks to break down barriers to establish common ground around the problem that needs solving.

Shireman has taken this message to the next generation of potential leaders. He’s considered a founding father of BridgeUSA, a college-based network that encourages students to engage in real debate of issues rather than the trolling and personal attacks too often encouraged by some politicians and media. Launched in 2016, there are currently 108 college chapters around the country.

Additionally, since 2014, Shireman has taught classes on leadership and negotiation at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

These activities – and the ingenuity and boldness of the many researchers, investors, and entrepreneurs who are building businesses that reflect nature’s regenerative models –  provide a solid foundation for Circle America to build on. As Shireman explains, “There’s a good business model to support circularity.”

Established companies such as Patagonia and Ikea and relative newcomers Too Good to Go and TerraCycle showcase the kind of smart, sustainable, market-based solutions that are the heart of the circular economy.

Shireman has a three-year plan for Circle America to broaden education, promotion, and acceptance of the principles of a circular economy. Initially, the organization will support circular policies such as extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, which make producers, not governments and taxpayers, responsible for what happens to their products at the end of their lifespan. Such laws exist in 7 states and are being considered in 13 others. Circle America will support those efforts with the goal of establishing a federal EPR standard.

The Trump presidency, which scoffs at environmental concerns, would seem to be a major obstacle to Circle America, but Shireman assumes Trump will leave the White House in 2029, the MAGA movement will fragment, and the free market will assert itself.

Referencing renewable energy as an example, he says, “Another Republican is not going to be able to maintain the anti-renewables stance of Donald Trump. There’s too much support within the Republican Party for renewables.”

Shireman may be underestimating the Republican Party’s 40-year effort to establish a unitary executive. The radicals who took over the party and drafted Project 2025 seem intent on establishing an autocracy that will far outlast the current president.

Reminded of the possibility of an entrenched, self-serving opposition, Shireman remains undeterred, responding with characteristic fearlessness and a fixation on the end goal: “You have to think very creatively about how to use the power that’s out there to change the power that’s out there.”

Author’s disclosures: In 1983, I fundraised for CalPIRG and educated the public on the bottle bill, and I am now an advisor to Circle America. I was not introduced to Shireman until last year.