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Dan Dicker is the founder and CEO of Circular&Co, a Cornwall-based Circular Design brand on a mission to eliminate single-use waste.
With a background in product design and innovation, Dan has spent over 20 years championing circular economy principles, designing products and systems that keep materials in use for longer. Alongside consumer products, he leads Circular&Co’s work on reuse and returnable cup systems, partnering with venues, events and organisations to drive real-world change and deliver genuine environmental impact.
Dan explains how Circular&Co’s design skills are creating reuse and returnable cup systems, which are breaking the mould by not requiring an app, or a deposit, and are achieving extremely high levels of reuse by being super-convenient for the cup users, for cafes and for the local community.
We hear how the systems work across a range of use scenarios, and how Circular&Co are using rich data sets to design efficient and effective systems for logistics and cleaning, and to help potential clients make a compelling business case.
Podcast host Catherine Weetman helps businesses use circular, regenerative and fair solutions to do better, with less.
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Read on for more on our guest and links to the people, organisations and other resources we mention.
Links for our guest:
- Circular&Co website https://circularandco.com/
- Website: https://circularandco.com/
- Instagram: @circularandco
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/circularandco
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/circular-co/
- Dan Dicker on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/dan-dicker-8a0616146
Other resources we mentioned:
- Episode 36 Dan Dicker of Circular&Co – Circular&Co invent award-winning products and solutions that keep our materials and finite resources in use for as long as possible, whilst preventing them from ever reaching landfill or our oceans. They work with global brands, reinventing today’s waste into tomorrow’s circular products. https://www.rethinkglobal.info/episode-36-dan-dicker-of-circular&co/
- Episode 154 Loic Le Fouest of Clarasys: creating circular customer experiences https://www.rethinkglobal.info/154-loic-le-fouest-of-clarasys-designing-circular-customer-experiences/
- Research shows that plastic reuse and recycling become vectors for spreading chemicals of concern, which is especially concerning when plastics are reused for food packaging, or when food packaging is made with recycled plastics. Geueke B, Phelps DW, Parkinson LV, Muncke J. Hazardous chemicals in recycled and reusable plastic food packaging. Cambridge Prisms: Plastics. 2023;1:e7. doi:10.1017/plc.2023.7
- An article on the health issues around single-use cups from Xiangyu Liu, a research fellow at Griffith University in Australia https://theconversation.com/takeaway-coffee-cups-release-thousands-of-microplastic-particles-273348
Guest bio
Dan Dicker is the founder and CEO of Circular&Co, a Cornwall-based Circular Design brand on a mission to eliminate single-use waste. Originally founded in 2003, Circular&Co creates thoughtfully designed reusable products made from waste materials such as recycled fabric, coffee waste and bubblegum.
With a background in product design and innovation, Dan has spent over 20 years championing circular economy principles, designing products and systems that keep materials in use for longer. Alongside consumer products, he leads Circular&Co’s work on reuse and returnable cup systems, partnering with venues, events and organisations to drive real-world change and deliver genuine environmental impact.
If you’re new to the circular economy, you might like the ‘getting started’ playlist. There’s also an interactive podcast index, making it easy to find episodes on each of the key circular economy strategies or for a specific market sector. And to dig deeper, please check out Catherine’s award-winning A Circular Economy Handbook, published by Kogan Page.
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