Isolde de Ridder is a circular jeweller and goldsmith. She founded her business - Isolde de Ridder Sieraden, in 2017, to create high-end jewellery with the greatest care for both people and planet. Isolde gives discarded metals and other materials a second life, contributing to a better world for future generations. Isolde began her education to become a goldsmith in 2006, to combine her passion for gemstones, creativity and working with her hands. She’s inspired by Nature, gemstones, ancient ci...
Apr 09, 2022•47 min
HELENA NORBERG-HODGE is a pioneer of the new economy movement and recipient of Right Livelihood Award (aka the "Alternative Nobel Prize"), the Arthur Morgan Award and the Goi Peace Prize for contributing to “the revitalization of cultural and biological diversity, and the strengthening of local communities and economies worldwide.” Helena Norberg-Hodge is also an author, and her most recent book is Local is Our Future. This book connects the dots between our social, economic, ecological and spir...
Mar 27, 2022•47 min
Charles Ross is a specialist in Performance Sportswear Design & sustainable matters, focusing on issues like Forever Chemicals (highlighted by the movie Dark Waters), the Plastics-in-the-Ocean, ReGenerative Agriculture. We discuss a range of sustainability issues related to Outdoor Clothing designs and materials, including the issue of over-consumption
Mar 13, 2022•53 min
Tom Szaky, founder of TerraCycle, tells us how the Loop reusable packaging platform is bringing the convenience of prefill to high streets everywhere. TerraCycle and Loop are tackling the root causes of waste, including single use and disposable items. We hear why they chose prefill, and why reuse needs to ‘feel disposable’. Tom explains how they are helping big brands and retailers to make the business case, feel confident about moving forward, and scale up from pilots to in-store roll-outs.
Feb 27, 2022•49 min
Gavin Fernie-Jones founded One Tree at a Time, an amazing circular social enterprise for outdoor gear and ski-wear, sharing value with the community and nature. Living in the Alps, Gavin has seen for himself the impact global warming has had in the mountains he calls home. He’s always loved the outdoors, having grown up living in an outdoor centre, but it was while running his bootfitting business The Boot Lab that he realised the impact his business was having on the environment. Gavin started ...
Feb 13, 2022•42 min
Odyssey Innovation collects and recycles marine plastic into kayaks and other products. In 2020, we heard about the UK south-west coast operations – now it is expanding, with the Net Generation Scheme - helping the fishing industry, local government and lots of other stakeholders to create a scalable circular solution to reduce marine plastics. This is something that could expand around the world!
Jan 30, 2022•29 min
Solving customer problems is at the heart of a successful product or service – but what if you’ve misunderstood your customer’s pain points? Today’s episode is one of my regular round ups of the last 9 conversations, exploring the theme of customer Pain Points. We’ll look at this from the perspective of businesses, and citizens – you and me. Some of those pain points are being overlooked by companies – that could be because they have a one-size-fits-all approach that might create value for one c...
Jan 16, 2022•25 min
RubyMoon, based in Brighton in the UK, is already using recycled fibres from Ocean Plastics to make its active wear products, and now wants to go further through research projects that overcome the technical challenges of recovering and recycling the kind of textiles commonly used in swimwear. Jo explains that this project focuses on two key fabric elements, Nylon 6 – a strong, durable polyamide, and Elastane, that makes the fabric stretchy so it fits well and supports activites like swimming an...
Jan 02, 2022•41 min
Kresse Wesling, CBE, is a multi-award winning environmental entrepreneur. After first meeting the London Fire Brigade in 2005, Kresse launched Elvis & Kresse, which rescues and transforms decommissioned fire hose into innovative lifestyle products and returns 50% of profits to the Fire Fighters Charity.The company now collects 12 different waste streams and has several charitable partnerships and collaborations across a number of industry sectors.
Dec 12, 2021•55 min
Megan O’Connor is co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle, a metal processing company that has developed technology to enable a clean, domestic, and streamlined supply of critical minerals for the clean energy transition. Megan tells us how she came up with the idea for using electro-extraction, a technology developed by her co-founder for a completely different application, and how she then pivoted the entire focus of her PhD to develop this.
Nov 28, 2021•37 min
Alyssa Couture is the author of Healthy Fashion: The Deeper Truths. Alyssa’s book is all about fashion for mental health, physical health, spiritual health, and energetic health. Alyssa brings a radical new perspective to fashion, looking at everything from the textiles and dyes we use, to how our clothes can improve our mental and physical health. Alyssa’s work shows how all of this is connected to our environment and improving sustainability. We’ll start by asking Alyssa to share some of her r...
Nov 14, 2021•43 min
The UK’s first shared wardrobe for kids - Charlotte Morley founded thelittleloop to offer a solution to clothing waste with convenience, choice, quality and value. Charlotte grew up being an advocate for sustainability, and found becoming a parent was a watershed moment. But, when it came to dressing her children she couldn't find a satisfactory solution to the waste that rapidly-growing mini-humans create. Hand-me-downs were haphazard and offered no choice. Buying new then trying peer-to-peer r...
Oct 30, 2021•57 min
Pierre-Emmanuel Saint-Esprit is the co-founder of ZACK, France’s leading company enabling the second life of electronic products, through recycling, repair, resale and donation. Last year, the TECH FOR GOOD report by the Presidency of the French Republic named ZACK as one of the top 3 French circular companies. Pierre-Emmanuel explains how his MBA in entrepreneurship at Berkeley, California, helped him create a business to fight climate change, and reduce our pressure on natural resources. We fi...
Oct 16, 2021•50 min
As the account manager for the Upcyclecentrum in Almere, in the Netherlands, Hede Razoky has a strong focus on creative entrepreneurship and making connections, for a shared goal of a 'world without waste'. The Upcyclecentrum has three elements: [1] it’s a recycling centre for local citizens, [2] it has an ‘experience room’ made from upcycled materials, for use by local businesses and community groups, and [thirdly] it has a brilliant entrepreneur incubation programme… providing facilities, mate...
Oct 02, 2021•38 min
Malin Orebäck is leading McKinsey Design’s work in sustainability and circular economy. McKinsey Design is one of the world’s leading design agencies, and Malin shares a wide range of insights and gives us a masterclass introduction to circular design for products and services. Malin explains how she helps her clients get started with circular, and overcome linear ‘lock-in’.
Sep 18, 2021•54 min
Astrid Wynne is the Sustainability Lead at Techbuyer, a global sustainable IT solutions provider, which specialises in product life extension. She is also head of partnerships at Interact, a software tool that optimises energy and carbon usage of servers. Astrid has co-authored a number of academic papers including ‘Optimizing server refresh cycles: The case for circular economy with an aging Moore's Law’, which looked at how past generations of IT can provide a net positive on use-phase energy,...
Sep 04, 2021•45 min
Every 10th episode, Catherine Weetman looks back at recent conversations and round up some of the insights we’ve heard: The theme for this episode is turning off the tap. What do I mean by that? One of my favourite metaphors for the linear economy - our system of taking materials, making stuff, using it and then throwing it away. We’re pushing lots of resources in at one end of the pipe - but it gushes out at the end, and there are leaks all the way along the pipe with pollution going into the a...
Aug 21, 2021•33 min
Rae Stanton is the Earthcare Retail Lead for Lush Cosmetics UK and Ireland, using Permaculture principles to provide environmental best practice insight and guidance on packaging, sourcing regenerative ingredients and much more. We find out how Lush embeds Permaculture and regenerative agriculture approaches into its business practices, and why Lush realised it needed to ‘own the packaging solution’ instead of relying on municipal recycling collections. Rae explains how Lush engaged its customer...
Aug 07, 2021•46 min
We talk to Elis Joudalova about OLIO, the #1 sharing app. OLIO connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared, not thrown away. This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from your baker, or the groceries in your fridge when you go away. OLIO can also be used for non-food household items. Elis looks after Market Growth & Partnerships for OLIO, and has kickstarted, grown and managed strong food s...
Jul 24, 2021•38 min
Helen Burdett leads the World Economic Forum’s work on circular economy innovation, including its flagship initiative, Scale360°, and its work on Circular Trailblazers. The Scale360° program advances innovation ecosystems for environmental and economic impact with scalable, locally-led innovation support delivered through private-public partnerships--all connected through a global digital community. Circular Trailblazers are the subject of a new report from the World Economic Forum and impact or...
Jul 10, 2021•34 min
Laura Meijering, a designer, fashion lover and entrepreneur from The Netherlands. While studying, Laura watched the True Cost documentary - something inside her snapped and she realised she wanted to be part of a better fashion system. Laura founded Unravelau in 2017, to unravel the threads of fashion and keep only the good parts. She wants to pioneer a new way of designing the clothes we wear. As Laura says, unravelling the fashion industry is a big job, and so Unravelau starts by cutting the c...
Jun 26, 2021•34 min
We meet Anthony Burns, Chief Operating Officer of ACS in Scotland. ACS started out as a formal-wear hire business, and is now an internationally recognised and award-winning circular fashion enterprise with clothes rental offerings for woman, men, children and babies. It is now working with a wide range of fashion brands, acting as their Circular Service Provider. We find out how the business has evolved, its progress towards B- Corp status, and about some of its innovations in packaging and gar...
Jun 12, 2021•38 min
Catherine Weetman talks to Louise Bijleveld, Co-Founder of LONO in Côte d’Ivoire. Lono helps agro-industrial companies and farmer cooperatives to create value from waste, by converting it into biofertilizers and biogas. Its overall aim is to help value reach rural areas and reduce the inequalities in agricultural supply chains. Côte d’Ivoire is an important global producer of cocoa beans, cashew nuts, natural rubber and tropical fruits – all of these produce huge amounts of agricultural waste wh...
May 29, 2021•44 min
Mick Payne is the Managing Director of Techbuyer’s UK operations. Techbuyer helps businesses maximise their IT budgets by supplying cost-effective new and quality refurbished servers, storage, memory and networking equipment, from over 150 brands including HPE, Dell, IBM and Cisco. Every year it configures over 3000 IT servers and data-erases over 10,000 hard drives each month.
May 15, 2021•38 min
Elizabeth Knight is an author, sustainability activist and founder of New York’s first Repair Café, and is the co-author (with John Wackman) of Repair Revolution: How Fixers Are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture. In the book, John and Elizabeth explore repairing in the broadest sense of the word. They focus on the community repair experience, the wisdom of repair, the sustainable aspects of repairing, the adventure of opening a device and seeing what’s inside, the right to repair that is gainin...
May 01, 2021•42 min
Jamie Butterworth is a partner at Circularity Capital, helping large investors, including financial institutions, global corporations and family offices, to invest in circular businesses which can gain competitive advantage by breaking the link between resource use and business success Circularity Capital invests in circular businesses and startups, such as Winnow, ZigZag, Shark Solutions and Grover. Jamie tells us why there is a need for specialist investment in circular businesses and what spe...
Apr 17, 2021•41 min
In this season, we’ve featured another 9 amazing, talented people, helping to make the circular economy happen. Our guests have been from the USA, Chile, Ghana, Spain and the UK. We’ve heard valuable insights, shared by people working in startups, in well-established companies, and working to support those with new ideas, or to make existing businesses more circular. And yet again, I’m struggling to fit all the brilliant tips and lessons learned into this round-up episode. A recurring theme was ...
Apr 03, 2021•29 min
Ryan Edwards is Co-founder of Naked Innovations, an eclectic mix of entrepreneurial “co-creators, fresh-thinkers, disruptors, shakers and provocateurs” that create and connect agrifood ecosystems to re-align the planet, business and people. Ryan is passionate about transforming and innovating the agrifood industry by developing successful businesses, communities and teams. His background includes over 15 years international leadership experience at Cargill as European Marketing & Innovation ...
Mar 21, 2021•41 min
Paraskevi Fotoglou is Sustainability Engineer at Camira Fabrics, a UK textile manufacturing company for task and soft seating. Paraskevi has expertise in circular economy projects and innovative design ideas. She is exploring new sustainability paths and enhancing circular initiatives with the design, innovation and manufacturing teams across the business. At Camira she has developed a broad knowledge on environmental accreditation, VOC emissions, the use of chemical substances used within each ...
Mar 07, 2021•42 min
Joanna Bingham, the founding CEO of Footprints Africa, is focussed on using the circular economy to support sustainable, scalable and inclusive approaches to development of local African economies. Joanna is also a founding partner of the CE360 Alliance, and leads the Ghana chapter for the African Circular Economy Network. She studied at Bradford University, the first degree-level circular economy course, supported by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Through Footprints Africa, Joanna runs a 6 mon...
Feb 21, 2021•41 min
