112 Fiona Dear: reviving repair and reuse for our tech
Fiona Dear is a Co-Director at The Restart Project, which aims to keep our electronic technology in use for longer through repair and reuse
consumer tech
Circular Insights #23
A purpose beyond profit
Dignified Wear in Ghana | The Thingery| ikigai for business purpose | Terracycle: doing the right thing for people and planet | Digital platforms for fashion supply chains | Fashion’s reset?|HP and Circular Computing |
Episode 21 Tom Ogonek – Close the Loop
Episode 21 with Tom Ogonek, Co-CEO of Close the Loop Inc. Tom joined Close the Loop in 2011 and oversees all aspects of global operations, building on a background in chemistry and manufacturing, and using his environmental industry perspective plus over 20 years of valuable operations experience to drive the business forward. Close the Loop operates circular economy services in Australia, the US and Europe.
Close the Loop make it easy to take back, recover, and reuse your high value products – so they don’t end up in rivers, landfills – or on someone else’s assembly line. These circular economy recovery services help keep the value in the system, instead of leaving it on the table for someone else.
Episode 17 – Nancy Bocken of Homie
Nancy Bocken co-founded the company HOMIE, which is developing circular services for pay-per-use home appliances, starting with washing machines. Nancy has an academic background, and she is professor and research coordinator in Sustainable Business Management and Practice at Lund University in Sweden.
We talk about how Homie got started, and how the service works. Nancy tells about some of the challenges they faced, and the benefits of pay-per-use for customers, the business, and our environment.
Nancy gives us some great tips for those of you thinking about circular projects or startups, and we hear how Homie has built relationships with its customers so that a lot of the marketing is by word-of-mouth.
Episode 14 – David Greenfield of Tech Takeback
We hear from David Greenfield, about Tech Takeback, a partnership he set up to collect end-of-use consumer technology and get it back into the loop.
“Tech-Takeback” is a partnership between SOENECS, Freegle, EraseMydata and Brighton & Hove City Council to collect stranded resources through pop-up shops.
We talk about how it got started, the complexities of secure data removal, lessons learned, and David’s plans for the next phase of the project. David tells us about his favourite circular economy example: Biohm, in London – and I’ve saved some more of David’s examples for the next ‘Best Bits’ episode (#20).