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Circular economy

Circular Economy Podcast - artwork for episode 160

160 Systems and system value

One of recurring themes in the new edition of A Circular Economy Handbook (to be published in November 2025) is the importance of systems thinking and systems design. I’ve been reading Seth Godin’s book, This is Strategy, and he says successful strategies depend on two things: being conscious of the change we seek to make and the systems that can amplify or impede our progress.
In other words, we must make sure we understand the different systems affecting the things we want to change. There can be multiple systems, many of which we have little control over.
It’s also important to find the ‘leverage points’ – those places in complex systems where, as Donella Meadows said, ‘a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.’
Pretty much every conversation in the last series gave me food for thought and insights for the book, and in this episode, I’d like to pick up on some of those.
First, we’ll recap on the systems thinking tools and approaches in Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty’s new book, Designing Tomorrow, and think about the impact of strategies and systems – who we affect, and what kind of impacts we’re responsible for.
Then we’ll look more closely at one of the key differences between conventional and circular business models – the role of the customer, and the need for them to be active, rather than passive participants.
Finally, we’ll unpick another recurring theme from the book – system value – a term used by the Future Fit Foundation for solutions where businesses address societal needs in a holistic way, while not hindering progress towards a flourishing future.
The last series covers episodes 151 to 159:
151 Clarissa Morawski of Reloop Platform: practical policies for circular packaging
152 Markus Terho: The Lifestyle Test
153 Anette Timmer of DESSO: the beauty of circularity
154 Loic Le Fouest of Clarasys: creating circular customer experiences
155 Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty: Life-centred design
156 Marcus Feldthus: the Post-Growth Guide for businesses
157 Liz Bui of Yulex: safer, sustainable materials
158 Steve Wilson of Compostify: bioplastics that enrich the planet
159 Kyle Wiens of iFixit: the rewards of repairability

Circular Economy Podcast artwork for episode 159

159 Kyle Wiens of iFixit: the rewards of repairability

Kyle Wiens is the co-founder of iFixit, the international repair community known for open-source repair manuals and product teardown. Kyle is also one of my circular economy heroes!
Since it started back in 2003, iFixit has empowered hundreds of millions of people to repair their broken stuff. Kyle led the international coalition that legalized Right to Repair, has testified before the US Congress and the International Trade Commission, and he is helping to develop global environmental standards.
Kyle brings us up to speed on how iFixit has evolved over the last two decades, in its reach, offer and engagement.
We talk about why we’ve ended up with so many products that are not designed to last and are hard – or impossible to repair, and why things are changing for the better.
Kyle explains the importance of the Right to Repair legislation that’s being rolled out, how brands that don’t get on board risk losing out, and explains why we need much more information about product durability and repairability.
We discuss some of the ways that brands can improve the design and durability of their products, and how iFixit can help them with that, and he offers a simple suggestion to help us all make better buying choices.

Circular Economy Podcast artwork for episode 158

#158 Steve Wilson of Compostify: bioplastics that enrich the planet

Compostify makes truly home-compostable plant pots and other bioplastic solutions designed to nourish the earth. Its products naturally break down without leaving harmful residues, and Compostify says this packaging enriches the planet, rather than polluting it.
Steve Wilson is the Co-founder and CEO of Compostify, with a background in scaling technology businesses. Steve is applying his expertise in innovation, partnerships, and market expansion to make compostable packaging a mainstream reality.
We talk about where the idea came from, and how they partnered with researchers to develop solutions, with a very challenging design brief that would support scaling this out around the world.
We talk about the criteria for the biomaterials and Steve explains the design features of the pots, meaning the Compostify solution enables ‘retailers, growers, nurseries, distributors, and manufacturers to transition to home compostable plant pots without sacrificing performance or ease of use.’
Steve also tells us about the feedback from gardeners, and the surprising benefits that emerged when commercial gardeners began using the pots.

Circular Economy Podcast - artwork for episode 157

157 Liz Bui of Yulex: safer, sustainable materials

Liz Bui takes us behind the scenes at Yulex, a material science company that’s replacing extremely useful, but problematic petroleum-based products with natural rubber alternatives.
Liz Bui is Chief Executive Officer at YULEX, based in the USA. She began her career in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry where she spent 20 years in senior roles. On top of managing all operational and business matters at YULEX, Liz is an intellectual property and transactional lawyer, a PhD scientist and also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.
Originally from Vietnam, at the age of six Liz escaped on the day Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to the North Vietnamese forces. She and her siblings, without their parents, were war refugees aboard a fishing boat until they were rescued by a US aircraft carrier. Like other Vietnamese refugees from that period, she was granted permanent residency and a new life in the U.S.
We’ll hear about the origins and mission of Yulex and its long-term collaboration with Patagonia to develop natural rubber foam for wetsuits, replacing neoprene, a petroleum-based material.
Liz explains some of the key principles underpinning Yulex’s approach to innovation, and how these are fundamental to helping it scale out and create benefits right across its value network.
Liz talks us through some of the environmental and health issues associated with neoprene, and explains how Yulex is making it easier for suppliers to use natural rubber instead.
She tells us about Yulex’s latest material innovation, Yulastic filaments – a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based elastane, aka spandex.
And we hear how Yulex’s Equitable AG program supports rubber smallholders in Southeast Asia, distributing 50% of the profits back to them.

Artwork for circular economy podcast episode 155

155 Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty: Life-centred design

Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty have written a brilliant book called Designing Tomorrow: strategic design tactics to change your practice, organization and planetary impact, published earlier this year.
Martin Tomitsch is a Professor and Head of the Transdisciplinary School at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). As a design academic and educator, Martin advocates for the transformative power of design to envision speculative futures and drive positive change. He has written lots of academic articles and seven books, including Making Cities Smarter and Design Think Make Break Repeat.
Steve Baty was the inaugural CEO of the Australian Design Council, co-founder of Meld Studios and co-founder of UX Australia. He is a Director of the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence and served two years as the President of the Interaction Design Association. Steve focuses on the integration between strategic design and traditional architectural practice, especially for improving our public spaces, infrastructure and services.
You might be noticing interest around supporting responsible innovation in ways that consider all life – human and other-than-human. That might be badged as life-centred, regenerative or post-anthropocentric design, and Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty say these approaches share an important goal, to ‘reach an operational status where human activity no longer exceeds the planetary limits.’
In Designing Tomorrow, Martin and Steve bring together several design philosophies, to help designers, strategists and policymakers amplify their impact, shift their perspectives and empower them to create lasting positive change inside organizations.
We’ll talk about some of the concepts and tools they introduce in the book, why we need to carefully consider who is involved in a system and the broader implications of our design decisions, and ways to change our mindsets – including about stakeholders, our sphere of influence and how to think about strategic decisions.

154 Loic Le Fouest of Clarasys: designing circular customer experiences

Loic Le Fouest is a leading expert in Customer Experience (CX) with a strong track record of driving customer-centric transformation across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. As the head of the CX practice at Clarasys in the UK, Loic helps organisations design customer experiences that drive loyalty, innovation, and sustainable business growth.
Clarasys describes itself as The Experience Consultancy — employee-owned, purpose-driven, and dedicated to helping organisations create better experiences for customers, employees, and the planet.
Clarasys recognises that circular economy approaches often require fundamentally different relations between providers and users, and it’s keen to understand more about that.
In 2022, Loic launched a partnership between Clarasys and the University of Exeter’s Centre for the Circular Economy to tackle what they saw as one of the biggest challenges in circularity — customer engagement. This collaboration led to a report and toolkit on Creating Customer Experiences in the Circular Economy, providing businesses with practical strategies to make circular models work for their customers.
Loic is an experienced transformation consultant with over 10 years of consulting and industry experience, and he combines design thinking with his background in product management, digital transformation, lean 6-sigma and change management.
Loic shares insights from Clarasys’ collaboration with the Exeter team, which looked at how businesses were dealing with challenges around user adoption and acceptance across the food and beverage and household appliances sectors.
The research team looked at the new aspects of roles, behaviour and relationships for consumers/, and Loic explains some of the key findings around that, including ‘consumption work’ and ‘key moments that matter’ for customers.
The study also found that firms were struggling to launch and scale successful circular business models, and Loic talks about two kinds of approaches to that – ‘inside out’ versus ‘outside in’.

Artwork for Circular Economy Podcast episode 153

153 Anette Timmer of DESSO: the beauty of circularity

We hear insights from Anette Timmer of DESSO by Tarkett, a leading carpet brand that was an early adopter of circular economy principles.
Anette Timmer began her journey with DESSO almost 18 years ago, and has played a central role in the business’ transition to a circular economy model.

Anette helps to bridge the gap between the vision and execution of circular transformation, using marketing and communications to educate audiences about circularity; develop stakeholder trust and transparency; inspire behaviour change among customers; and build advocacy and momentum across the wider industry.

Anette is a strong advocate for cross-industry collaboration, where businesses share experiences, and work together to create systems to circulate products and materials.

DESSO is now part of Tarkett, and has a long-held belief in designing with people and planet in mind, and over a decade ago, it made a bold commitment to place circularity at the core of its ambitions.

Moving towards a closed-loop system has involved a total change of mindset within the business. DESSO calls its commitment the Beauty of Circularity, and it drives the business to do more with less at every stage. –

Annette unpacks the three pillars of Desso’s beauty of circularity strategy: designing products to live multiple lives; developing innovative materials that are made to be remade; and building systems to return flooring at end of life to complete the circular journey. And sometimes, synchronicity steps in to lend a hand!

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.

Artwork for Circular Economy Podcast episode 151

151 Clarissa Morawski of Reloop Platform: practical policies for circular packaging

Clarissa Morawski, CEO of Reloop Platform works with governments, industry stakeholders and NGOs to develop policies for a packaging circular economy. Clarissa brings nearly 30 years of technical, analytical and communications experience in waste reduction operations and policies. She started her own consulting business in 1998 and co-founded the Reloop Platform in 2015. As CEO, Clarissa works with stakeholders and partners to develop smart, practical and effective policy frameworks and operational recommendations, and combines her no-nonsense communication skills with science to make the case for ambitious policy.
Reloop Platform’s mission is to accelerate the global transition to a circular economy by working at the centre of policy-making with governments, industry stakeholders and NGOs. Reloop’s primary objective is to prevent waste, by reducing production and consumption, re-using packaging wherever possible and collecting materials properly for closed loop recycling.
We talk about a recent report, the Global Recycling League Table, that Reloop produced in partnership with Eunomia; and Clarissa highlights key elements of the recent EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulations.
Clarissa shares some insights on how to make sure policies actually make a difference and don’t get sabotaged by various vested interests; we hear how mindsets are changing, and brands are starting to see litter as a real issue.
We discuss Deposit Return Schemes and which ones are seen as best-practice, and we cover some of the issues affecting the safety of virgin and recycled packaging materials.

Circular Economy Podcast - artwork for ep 150

150 Catherine Weetman: Creating conditions for circularity

I’ve been reflecting on what’s come up over the last series, in episodes 141 to 149. How do we create the conditions for our ideas to spread? Do we fully understand the systems that circular products or services will be embedded in or affected by, how those work, and what keeps them going?
It’s likely there will be multiple systems, and some of these will be cultural, invisible and hard to disrupt. How much can you change? Could you create a new system that integrates with what’s already there?
We also look at who you need to convince – your target customers might have a wide range of characteristics and motivations, and they probably want approval – even permission – from colleagues, family or friends. Often, you’ll need to convince other parties – supply chain partners, distributors, investors, employees and more. What’s the value proposition to them? What pain points are you relieving, and what benefits can you offer?
Some circular solutions can solve multiple, disparate problems, either by design or from beneficial side-effects. Are you making this clear, and could it help you get more buy-in, attention and support?
The last series covers episodes 141 to 149:
149 Giulia Ziino of CircularPlace: generate value from underused assets
148 Tim Forslund of Sitra: circular solutions for nature
147 Dr Alexandra Leeper of Iceland Ocean Cluster: smarter ways to create value
146 Dr Monika Hauck of Repair Rebels: Making repairs easy & fashionable
145 Evolena de Wilde of Faircado: your AI-powered second-hand shopping assistant
144 Chris Allen of Decathlon: ever-evolving circular design
143 Michael Colarossi of Avery Dennison – Digital Product Passports
142 Anna De Matos of Iceland Tool Library – igniting circular communities
141 Joel Tasche of CleanHub: scaleable solutions to plastic pollution