Value Chain Framework

Value chains encompass the full range of activities and services required to bring a product or service from its conception to sale in its final markets—whether local, national, regional or global. Value chains include input suppliers, producers, processors and buyers.

WEEE Care - How We Recycle

All IT assets at Greenbox are designated for reuse or recycling. We are subscribers to the WEEE directive (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment Directive 2002/96/EC) the objective is to “Reduce - Reuse - Recycle”. We promote all three by reducing the amount of landfill, remarketing late model computers and recycling computers otherwise destined for landfill.

Basel Convention

Under the Basel Convention the equipment is shipped to the recycling plant where it is recycled using state-of-the-art mechanical and chemical processing.

Tables and further online resources

Therefore, and in accordance with the requirements of ISO 14001, CES is committed to:




• Managing our processes, materials and workforce in order to achieve continual improvement in our environmental performance


• Integrating environmental considerations into the selection of suppliers and sub-contractors, recycling processes, materials and energy usage


• Taking steps to prevent or minimize pollution arising as a result of our activities


• Setting objectives and targets for environmental improvement and reviewing actual results to targets monthly


• Demonstrating a commitment to full compliance with relevant legal and regulatory obligations

Postage is paid for by Clover Technologies Group, a national company that recycles, remanufactures, and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges, and small electronics. If your discarded gizmo cannot be refurbished or resold, its components are reused to refurbish other items, or it is further broken down and the materials recycled.

The pilot program is currently available in 10 areas, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego, but could become a national program as early as this fall if this trial run proves successful

Environment Minister Peter Garrett blamed the sudden move on a cost blow-out,
from an original estimate of $150 million to $750 million a year, due to its
unexpected popularity.

Mr Garrett set aside a further $271 million in the May budget to fund the
rebate scheme until June 30, but it is understood that money has been almost
entirely consumed by 30,000 applications in the past month.

Walton, being as shrewd as he was, basically broke other small town merchants in the early days. With his more efficient system, he might not have been able to tackle some titan head-on at the time. But with his better system, he could destroy those small town merchants. And he went around doing it time after time after time. Then, as he got bigger, he started destroying the big boys.

Well, that was a very, very shrewd strategy.

Here’s a model that we’ve had trouble with. Maybe you’ll be able to figure it out better. Many markets get down to two or three big competitors—or five or six. And in some of those markets, nobody makes any money to speak of. But in others, everybody does very well.

Over the years, we’ve tried to figure out why the competition in some markets gets sort of rational from the investor’s point of view so that the shareholders do well, and in other markets, there’s destructive competition that destroys shareholder wealth.

So you keep buying things that will pay for themselves in three years. And after 20 years of doing it, somehow you’ve earned a return of only about 4% per annum.

That’s the textile business.

The cash register was one of the great contributions to civilization. It’s a wonderful story. Patterson was a small retail merchant who didn’t make any money. One day, somebody sold him a crude cash register which he put into his retail operation. And it instantly changed from losing money to earning a profit because it made it so much harder for the employees to steal….

But Patterson, having the kind of mind that he did, didn’t think, “Oh, good for my retail business.” He thought, “I’m going into the cash register business.” And, of course, he created National Cash Register.

And he “surfed”. He got the best distribution system, the biggest collection of patents and the best of everything. He was a fanatic about everything important as the technology developed. I have in my files an early National Cash Register Company report in which Patterson described his methods and objectives. And a well-educated orangutan could see that buying into partnership with Patterson in those early days, given his notions about the cash register business, was a total 100% cinch.

I used to play poker when I was young with a guy who made a substantial living doing nothing but bet harness races…. Now, harness racing is a relatively inefficient market. You don’t have the depth of intelligence betting on harness races that you do on regular races. What my poker pal would do was to think about harness races as his main profession. And he would bet only occasionally when he saw some mispriced bet available. And by doing that, after paying the full handle to the house—which I presume was around 17%—he made a substantial living.

You have to say that’s rare. However, the market was not perfectly efficient. And if it weren’t for that big 17% handle, lots of people would regularly be beating lots of other people at the horse races. It’s efficient, yes. But it’s not perfectly efficient. And with enough shrewdness and fanaticism, some people will get better results than others.

And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don’t. It’s just that simple.

That is a very simple concept. And to me it’s obviously right—based on experience not only from the pari-mutuel system, but everywhere else.

How many insights do you need? Well, I’d argue: that you don’t need many in a lifetime. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway and all of its accumulated billions, the top ten insights account for most of it. And that’s with a very brilliant man—Warren’s a lot more able than I am and very disciplined—devoting his lifetime to it. I don’t mean to say that he’s only had ten insights. I’m just saying, that most of the money came from ten insights.

So you can get very remarkable investment results if you think more like a winning pari-mutuel player. Just think of it as a heavy odds against game full of craziness with an occasional mispriced something or other. And you’re probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It’s just that simple.

How many of you have 56 brilliant ideas in which you have equal confidence? Raise your hands, please. How many of you have two or three insights that you have some confidence in? I rest my case.

I’d say that Berkshire Hathaway’s system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is.

Over the long term, it’s hard for a stock to earn a much better return than the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns 6% on capital over 40 years and you hold it for that 40 years, you’re not going to make much different than a 6% return—even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns 18% on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you’ll end up with a fine result.

So the trick is getting into better businesses. And that involves all of these advantages of scale that you could consider momentum effects.

All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there. And when you think about it, that’s a very simple model. And it’s repeated over and over again.

And, in GEICO’s case, think about all the money we passively made…. It was a wonderful business combined with a bunch of foolishness that could easily be cut out. And people were coming in who were temperamentally and intellectually designed so they were going to cut it out. That is a model you want to look for.

And you may find one or two or three in a long lifetime that are very good. And you may find 20 or 30 that are good enough to be quite useful.