Circular Insights #33 – rethinking business for a new economy
Repair revolution | Creating value | Tao economics | Making a difference | Podcast 54 – LONO
Catherine Weetman
Catherine Weetman MSc FCILT FRSA - Director, Rethink Global Catherine gives talks, workshops and advice on the circular economy and sustainability. Her award-winning book, A Circular Economy Handbook for Business and Supply Chains, published by Kogan Page, includes wide-ranging examples and practical tips. Catherine has over 25 years' experience in contract logistics, manufacturing, retail and supply chain consultancy, and her career spans food, fashion and logistics, including Tesco, Kellogg's and DHL Supply Chain. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, and a Mentor and Regional Organiser for the Circular Economy Club
Episode 54 Louise Bijleveld – LONO
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 when harvested. The farms are often in remote areas, so it’s a big challenge to find ways to combine compatible feedstocks and make the logistics cost-effective.
Circular Insights #32 – the Anthropocene and your business
Linear risks| Podcasts 51 to 53| Circular office | 10 years to transform | Regenerative Agriculture podcast
Risks of business as usual
Our research shows that organisations in every sector face a variety of risks associated with ‘business as usual’ (the ‘linear’ economy). We introduce our new guide to ‘linear risks’ – free downloads available
Episode 53 Mick Payne – Techbuyer
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.
Episode 52 Elizabeth Knight – Repair Revolution
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 gaining attention worldwide – and much more!
We hear how repair cafes can bridge across social divides, and how they help people of all ages and backgrounds build new connections and develop their social confidence levels. We find out that you don’t need to be a repair geek, and hear about the wide range of volunteer roles available. Elizabeth explains what visible mending is, tells us inspiring stories about the rewards of being involved in a Repair Café, and how you can find one, or start your own.
Episode 51 – Jamie Butterworth of Circularity Capital
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 specific financial challenges those businesses have, how investors evaluate circular business models, and what is happening as more investors become aware that we’re in a race to solve the climate and biodiversity crises.
Jamie also explains Circularity Capital’s approach to working out what to invest in – through an ‘unintended consequences’ paper.
Circular Insights #31 – Transformational thinking
Thinking differently | Greenwashing | Economics of Biodiversity | Circularity along the value chain | Sustainability benchmarking | Action before profits | New community
Is greenwashing undermining YOUR sustainability work?
We explore why greenwashing (and circular-washing) undermines the work of ALL those pushing sustainability forward, ways you can guard against it in your own work, and how startups are proving that circular creates value for people and planet.
Episode 50 – Thinking differently
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 the advice to use different ways of thinking. You can link up with people from outside your organisation, you can use different design perspectives, like biomimicry, lean innovation or systems thinking, and you can develop your own process to help you think about the complete cycle, as we’ll hear later.