Data Without Decisions is Just Noise

By Siam Sukkhee Trading Co., Ltd — 2026-09-26 — Waste360 (recycling/scrap)

I read that Suzie Boxman from EREF made Waste360's 40 Under 40 list. Worth paying attention to, actually.

She didn't start out in waste. She studied wildlife ecology, got her Ph.D., and somehow ended up running research programs for the Environmental Research and Education Foundation. Which is fine—lots of people drift into their careers. What matters is what she's actually doing now.

As senior director of programs at EREF, Boxman helps the waste and recycling industry answer questions using research and data. Not the kind of research that sits in a filing cabinet gathering dust. The kind that moves companies to make different choices.

Here's the thing most people miss about data in any industry—metals, waste, recycling, whatever. You can have all the metrics in the world. Charts. Databases. Live feeds. None of it matters if nobody uses it.

Boxman sees this clearly. She wants the industry to have better data on something called "the business case for circularity"—basically, why going circular makes economic sense, not just environmental sense. Actually, let me be more precise. She wants companies to understand that it makes business sense and then incorporate that into their actual decisions. The research part is just the scaffolding.

What's less visible is her work building and leading EREF's Programs team. She describes herself as a servant leader. That's not a phrase I normally trust—sounds like the sort of thing people say in company town halls. But in context, it means something specific: moving the puzzle pieces around so other people can do the work. Which is the definition of making data useful to people who have to act.

The reason this matters for people in metals trading, in commodities, in any part of the supply chain is simple. Data without context is noise. Context without decision-makers using it is academic. Boxman's recognition is essentially for bridging that gap.

She's also been clear about what comes next: "I hope that we have more data to be able to do that, and that businesses can incorporate that into their decision making and they can demonstrate that it makes business sense because I think that's the only way we're going to get change."

Which, for what it's worth, is probably right.

Source: "I hope that we have more data to be able to do that, and that businesses can incorporate that into their decision making and they can demonstrate that it makes business sense." — Waste360

Tags: ESG metals mining industry