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Artwork for circular economy podcast episode 144

144 Chris Allen of Decathlon: ever-evolving circular design

Chris Allen, Sustainability Leader and Head of Circular Business Development at Decathlon UK. You’ve probably heard of Decathlon, which is the world’s largest sporting goods retailer, with over 1,700 stores in more than 70 countries. It’s a family-owned company, founded in 1976, and inspired by the belief that the best sports products should be accessible to everyone.
Chris Allen has 15 Years experience in Decathlon spanning various retail management roles, including several years in Category Management and Head of Outdoor before being appointed to his Sustainability role in 2022. Chris has a degree in Sports Engineering and is an advocate of all things outdoors, and loves being out on his bike or at the local climbing wall.
Decathlon describes itself as specialising in the creation and production of innovative sporting goods designed to delight and move people through the wonders of sport, including cycling, hiking, running, swimming and football.
Decathlon sees its mission as ever-evolving and high-performance design, the best quality at the lowest possible price, and expert advice that customers of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels can access in-store or online, from anywhere, at any time.
Decathlon has an integrated business model, with over twenty in-house brands as well as supplying well-known brands including Asics, Adidas, Garmin, Puma, Quiksilver, Reebok, Salomon, and many others.
In the UK, Decathlon offers a 2-year warranty on its own brand products, has buy-back programme so customers can save money and trade in their old gear. It sells through it’s retail stores and online, and offers a 365-day returns policy, giving customers a whole year to decide if something is right for them.
Chris will talk us through Decathlon’s approach, including how the buy-back, second-life and repair programmes work in practice, and how he’s working with the in-house and external product and design teams to implement a whole-systems approach to sustainability.

142 Anna De Matos – igniting circular communities

Anna De Matos is the founder of several community-focused sharing initiatives, and a force of nature.
Originally from Brazil, Anna De Matos went to university in the UK and moved to Iceland in 2017. Inspired by a visit to Toronto’s tool library, Anna started a tool library and repair café, and managed to bootstrap and crowdfund her way to establishing these – all whilst dealing with the serious challenges of autoimmune disease.
Anna has degrees in Conservation and Restoration and is now channelling her skills and experience into helping people conserve and restore their things. She founded the Munasafn RVK Tool Library to promote shared resource use and has organized numerous repair café events, fostering a culture of repair and reuse within Icelandic communities.
Anna’s skills go beyond organising and bringing people together, and she’s also created a technology add-on to MyTurn’s Library of Things software to provide a self-service kiosk option for Libraries of Things.
Anna’s hands-on experience in running these initiatives provides her with unique insights into the practical needs of communities, which she has channeled into the creation of the Circular Library Network (CLN), helping communities around the world manage their own “libraries of things,” promoting sustainability through shared access to essential items – so we can all get more, from less.
Anna’s story is inspiring, and fascinating, with many forks in the road that led her to what she’s doing now.

Artwork for episode 130 with Heather Davies

130 Heather Davies: the Re-Action Collective

It’s now 5 years since I started the podcast, and to celebrate, I’m doing a 5th anniversary mini-series. I’ve invited several guests from the Re-Action Collective, a group of circular economy pioneers in the outdoor sports sector. Over the next few episodes, we’ll be hearing from them and exploring 3 different types of circularity – sharing, repairing and repurposing.
The Re-Action Collective was formed in 2022, by Gavin Fernie-Jones and his friend, Heather Davies. We met Gavin back in Episode 72, talking about One Tree at a Time, a circular social enterprise to repurpose outdoor gear and ski-wear and to share value with the community and nature.
In this episode, we’ll meet Gavin’s co-founder, Heather Davies, a freelance sustainability-focused content creator and communications trainer. Heather is motivated by a love of nature and the outdoors, and she works with a range of organisations, helping them communicate their sustainability stories and strategies, without greenwashing. She also offers training, including carbon literacy courses.
The Re-Action Collective is all about Making the outdoors more affordable and accessible, and over the next few episodes, we’ll meet some of the member organisations, with business models based on sharing, repairing and repurposing.
Heather and Gavin formed Re-Action to challenge product marketing that tells us we need shiny new, highly technical kit to access the outdoors. They say “We live in the outdoors and we know this isn’t true. We also know a lack of access to basic outdoor kit and absence of community are barriers to people getting outside and active for the benefit of their physical and mental health.”
The Re-Action Collective wants to amplify the voice and impact of circular economy pioneers in the outdoor sports sector, for example running, cycling, climbing, surfing, sailing and snow sports. Member organisations rescue products and revive them through repair, rebranding and repurposing. They then redistribute items through resale, rental and donation and reallocate profits to regenerate the outdoors.
Re-Action is focused on community-first solutions and wants to empower citizens to be more mindful about how they buy, maintain and dispose of their outdoor clothing and equipment.
We’ll hear how the collective works in practice, and how they’ve developed ways to avoid the pitfalls of shared interest groups that end up being hard to engage with, because they generate too much information and conversation.

Artwork for Circular Economy Podcast episode 117 James Rigg -a refurbishment revolution for electricals

117 James Rigg: a refurbishment revolution for electricals

James Rigg is CEO of Trojan Electronics in Wales, and has a wealth of expertise in value-adding circular solutions for electrical and electronics manufacturers and retailers. James has built on his experience across retail and more recently, leading growth across the Buy It Direct Group, and is now focussed on expanding Trojan Electronics Circular Solutions to help retailers and manufacturers recover value and at the same time, reduce e-waste. Trojan provides services to high-profile brands, and we’ll hear about some examples.
E-waste – the waste from end-of-life or unwanted electricals and electronics – is the world’s fastest growing waste stream, and is forecast to grow by 30% over this decade.
The Trojan Electronics team provides electrical repair, refurb and resell services in several ways – through their client’s own marketplace stores, through direct integration into the clients’ ecommerce stores, and through Amazon, eBay, Tik Tok, Wowcher and others.
Trojan is a £20M turnover business based in Swansea, south Wales, employing 150 staff in a purpose-built warehouse housing repairs and all its other services, and refurbishing over half a million items each year.
Ahead of our conversation, James sent me some customer research, digging into people’s attitudes to refurbished products, with some very encouraging findings, and we’ll hear more about that in the conversation. I can share a few of the standout figures now: over a third of the respondents had bought a refurbished or repaired electrical item in the previous 12 months, including smartphones, laptops or tablets, and household appliances. Only 1% of those people had a bad experience with that purchase, and almost 80% said they’d buy refurbished in the future. And even though people knew they’d bought a refurbished item, 24% of customers couldn’t tell the difference from the equivalent new product.
The survey includes some market research, highlighting predictions for the growth of refurbished electronics – the market was valued at around $85bn in 2021 and is forecast to grow at 12% each year over the next decade. James is happy to share the research, and I’ve included a link to the research paper in the shownotes.
James also shared information from Trojan’s clients who are offering refurbished products alongside new versions, and the results are very exciting. However, at some clients, attitudes are slow to change, with people reluctant to make the transition to selling refurbished products as well as new versions, and James explains some of the reasons behind this.

Circular Economy Podcast - artwork for #116 Chuck Fuerst - circularity for product returns

116 Chuck Fuerst: circularity for product returns

Chuck Fuerst is Chief Marketing Officer for software provider ReverseLogix.
ReverseLogix is the only end-to-end, centralized, and fully integrated returns management system built specifically for retail, eCommerce, manufacturing and 3PL organizations. The ReverseLogix platform facilitates, manages, and reports on the entire returns’ lifecycle.
When I first worked in logistics, back in the late 1980s, for most companies, most of the time, returns were a minor issue. When e-commerce came along, starting in the 1990’s, product returns began to increase, and over the last few decades – especially as companies have moved towards cheaper products, with less reliable information on sizing for things like clothing – returns have become a major issue for many businesses – whether that’s for manufacturers and retailers, and for both B2B and B2C models.
Chuck explains how the ReverseLogix software helps companies improve the process for getting products back into the system – whether that’s from e-commerce returns, returns of faulty goods, for repairs and warranty claims, and more. We’ll hear how ReverseLogix improves the customer returns experience, saves employee time with faster workflows, and helps businesses get insights into returns data – all of which improve profits and circular outcomes.

Circular Economy Podcast Episode 81 René Bethmann – circular designs for outdoor sports gear

81 – René Bethmann – circular designs for outdoor sports gear

How do we navigate the tensions of having brilliant products that help us enjoy outdoor activities, yet which are difficult to repair and recycle? René Bethmann specializes in textile and apparel technology, and is leading new approaches to the design of more circular products and materials at Vaude Sports. René focuses on emotional durability, repairability and renewable or recyclable materials. Plus, if we focus on defossilization, not decarbonization, we can unlock new ways of thinking about textiles, coatings and other materials.

Circular Economy Podcast Episode 74 Charles Ross on Outdoor Clothing

74 Charles Ross on Outdoor Clothing

Charles Ross is a specialist in Performance Sportswear Design & sustainable matters, focusing on issues like Forever Chemicals (highlighted by the movie Dark Waters), the Plastics-in-the-Ocean, ReGenerative Agriculture. We discuss a range of sustainability issues related to Outdoor Clothing designs and materials, including the issue of over-consumption

Circular Economy Podcast Ep72 Gavin Fernie-Jones One Tree at a Time

Episode 72 Gavin Fernie-Jones is repurposing outdoor gear, One Tree at a Time

Gavin Fernie-Jones founded One Tree at a Time, an amazing circular social enterprise for outdoor gear and ski-wear, sharing value with the community and nature. Living in the Alps, Gavin has seen for himself the impact global warming has had in the mountains he calls home. He’s always loved the outdoors, having grown up living in an outdoor centre, but it was while running his bootfitting business The Boot Lab that he realised the impact his business was having on the environment.
Gavin started making small changes to the way that business operated, and seeing the results of this inspired him to start a social enterprise called One Tree at a Time.
One Tree at a Time is embedding circular approaches to change behaviours, build community and protect the mountain environment. The One Tree team has tapped into some surprising sources of ‘waste’ to create value for local people and help build and strengthen local connections. On top of that, One Tree at a Time supports businesses and individuals to change behaviour and protect their mountain environment.

Circular Economy Podcast Ep64 Pierre-Emmanuel Saint-Esprit of ZACK

Ep64 Pierre-Emmanuel Saint-Esprit of ZACK

Pierre-Emmanuel Saint-Esprit is the co-founder of ZACK, France’s leading company enabling the second life of electronic products, through recycling, repair, resale and donation. Last year, the TECH FOR GOOD report by the Presidency of the French Republic named ZACK as one of the top 3 French circular companies.
Pierre-Emmanuel explains how his MBA in entrepreneurship at Berkeley, California, helped him create a business to fight climate change, and reduce our pressure on natural resources. We find out how ZACK creates social value too, helping people build the skills and confidence to secure employment.