Heavy industry is the foundation of modern society. We need materials like cement, steel and aluminum more than ever to rebuild our bridges and roads, to construct wind and solar projects, and to manufacture electric vehicles and heat pumps that will undergird our future.

But industry needs a new social contract with America. For all the good industrial progress brings, it also causes a lot of harm. It threatens our climate, reinforces environmental racism, it’s wasteful, and it has left workers and communities behind when convenient to industry’s bottom line. What’s more, our communities, natural environment and our economy are under threat by a “take-make-waste” economy. We waste most of our waste, and we emit an extraordinary amount of pollution through harmful production and disposal, including methane from organics decomposition in landfills.

Addressing this challenge, and the opportunity it presents, is why Industrious Labs exists. With our partners, we’re reimagining the industrial sector as not only a source of good union jobs, but a climate solution where we make things responsibly, prioritize waste reduction, reuse, repair, remanufacture, and recycle. To do this we will have to change how our stuff is made and what we do with it when we are done with it. We see an America that is known again as a country of industry, where the best quality and greenest materials are made with American labor. In the future we build together, industry is a good neighbor to communities, the anchor of a healthy regenerative economy, and leading the world in addressing climate change.