"Waste-to-wealth manager and mushroom consultant It’s a long and unusual title, but Gordon Jackson’s role as waste-to-wealth manager and mushroom consultant at Soneva Fushi in the Maldives is #lifegoals for environmentalists. Jackson oversees the resort’s Eco Centro, an on-site hub designed to reuse and recycle as much resort waste as possible. For years, the center has composted organic foods for reuse in the resort gardens, turned scrap wood and jungle trimmings into charcoal for barbecue grills and a pizza oven, and crushed glass for reuse in concrete. Now, he’s experimenting with melting down carbonated drink cans and casting the aluminum into molds for doorknobs or cupboard handles, as well as recycling single-use plastics into stools. “It’s important that the products we make from these materials have a decent lifespan, so we are aiming for things that are inherently useful and can replace products which would otherwise be imported from abroad,” explains Jackson. On the mushroom front, he has set up a lab for mushroom spawn production, which cuts down on imports and allows gardeners to experiment with new varieties." - Ashlea Halpern