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behaviour change

Artwork for Circular Economy Podcast episode 181

181 Dr. Meital Peleg Mizrachi: the rebound effects of second-hand fashion platforms

When we look closely, we can see that circular solutions can end up compromising – or even cancelling out – sustainability benefits. In this episode, we’ll discuss research into the psychological concept of moral licensing, and the rebound effect.
Dr. Meital Peleg Mizrachi works at the intersection of sustainable fashion, consumer behaviour, and public policy. She is a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University and an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut, and her research focuses on the environmental and social implications of global fashion systems, including overconsumption, second-hand markets, and regulatory frameworks.
Meital explores how policy design, behavioural insights, and economic structures shape sustainable consumption patterns. She is a board member at the Sustainable Fashion Consumption Research Network, and her work has been published in leading academic journals and featured in global media outlets.
We’ll discuss unintended consequences of circular economy solutions in fashion, including the rebound effect associated with second-hand consumption.
We’ll also talk about her research into the global flows of used clothing with fieldwork in Ghana.

152 Markus Terho: the Lifestyle Test

Markus Terho tells us about the Lifestyle Test, a web-based app for anyone who’s concerned about global warming and wants to be a part of the solution by adopting a positive and sustainable lifestyle. It’s already available in 10 countries across the EU and has 350,000 users.
Markus describes himself as a corporate responsibility veteran, with over three decades in the industry. He is the CEO of Sparkter, a boutique sustainability consultancy to help simplify and make sense of sustainability. Before that, Markus was the chief sustainability officer at Nokia and has been a director at the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra.
Markus is passionate about helping people to find their own way to build a good life that is also sustainable.
Almost 70 per cent of Europe’s climate emissions and almost all of the damage to nature can be traced back to people’s everyday lives – how we eat, live, move around and consume. In less than 10 minutes, The Lifestyle Test gives you clear and tailored tips about simple positive and sustainable lifestyle changes that can help you save time and money and improve your quality of life.
Markus explains how the test was first developed and how it’s evolved since, and explains some of the ways it’s been shaped for each different country it’s in. He goes onto explain what kind of things it covers and how it works from a user’s perspective, including the high proportion of circular economy suggested actions.
Markus highlights the way conversations about climate often result in feelings of guilt and shame, and how the app is designed to help us feel we have agency, with some insights from well-established models for successful behaviour change.
And we hear what’s in the pipeline for future developments, including ways to link more sustainable behaviours to other primary motivators, such as health or convenience.

Rethink loop

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