Social benefits from circular approaches, including regeneration of local resources, creating jobs for disadvantaged or excluded groups, social enterprises, and so on.
Our values guide our attitudes and actions, and most people’ deep-seated values support circularity and sustainability. But we misunderstand other people’s values, and that is holding us back.
The field of social psychology can help us understand more about how our personal values drive behaviour, and what that means for sustainability and the circular economy. How can we tap into our values to drive positive change?
Ruth Taylor of the Common Cause Foundation guides us through the field of social psychology, to explore how our personal values drive behaviour, and what that means for sustainability and the circular economy.
I recently completed ‘Values 101’, a short course run by the Common Cause Foundation. It opened my eyes to a whole new way of thinking about our behaviour and what motivates our choices, actions and interactions.
The course tutors were Ruth and her colleague Tom Crompton, and today, I’m talking to Ruth about some of my main takeaways from the course.
The Common Cause Foundation works at the intersection of culture change and human values, and is driven by the belief that it is possible to design societies that magnify and strengthen the cooperative and caring parts of human nature. By doing that together, we can build ways of living that are equitable and just, and lie within our planetary boundaries.
The Common Cause Foundation sees Values playing a pivotal role in shaping our cultures and systems. The dominant global culture is out of balance, prioritising extrinsic values such as wealth, power and social status, in a way that has led us to the brink of destruction; with crises of poverty, inequality and climate change. Common Cause Foundation’s work shows that balance can be restored by elevating intrinsic values instead – values like community, creativity and unity with nature.
Ruth Taylor has worked in the field of social and environmental change for close to 15 years. She is driven by the question of how more people can be encouraged to think, feel and act differently when it comes to the multiple and interconnected challenges we are experiencing globally.
Ruth explains what values mean, and how they impact our daily lives, and we talk about the Perception Gap – the mistaken beliefs we have about other people’s values, and why that matters. We also talk about why we might not always act in line with our values, and how we can overcome that.
We explore how engaging certain values could influence more sustainable and circular behaviours, and how it’s relatively easy for people to become interested in topics and actions that have similar underlying principles – for example, being passionate about women’s rights makes it more likely that you’ll be interested in supporting other movements for equality and fairness, both for humans and other-than humans.
We find out how values are like muscles, and can be strengthened, and we discover why we misunderstand other people’s values, and how that’s holding back our shift to a circular and regenerative world.
Professor Walter R Stahel, widely acknowledged as a circular economy pioneer, talks about progress, barriers and missed opportunities. Walter is the founder and director of the Product-Life Institute in Switzerland, founded in 1982 and now Europe’s oldest sustainability-based consultancy and think tank. These days, his is a keynote speaker and author on sustainability and circular economy and says he has always been interested in what he does not know.
With over 500 publications since 1975, he holds a number of visiting professor and lecturing roles, and a long list of awards and advisory roles, including being a Full Member of the Club of Rome.
Walter sees the circular economy as a ‘changer of the globalised industrial game’, creating societal resilience and providing protection against disruptive events. Walter created the idea of the performance economy, as a way of extending the concepts of the circular economy, and says that many of the opportunities are either untapped, or criticised by those who benefit from the Rentier Economy. (If you want to know more about the problems of the rentier economy, have a listen back to ep 119 with Ken Webster.)
We talk about the business case for the circular economy, and Walter highlights some of the aspects that are often missed, especially for the future value of materials. We discuss the opportunities offered by platforms, digital twins and passports for products and materials, and why we need better ways to assess the remaining life of expensive products and components.
We discuss the need to shift from a mindset of owning to using, and the need to change how we frame things for customers and businesses. Walter describes how we might rethink designs to minimise risks and liabilities, and how caring for our things opens up lots of interesting career opportunities, especially for young people.
My review of The Wonderful Circles of Oz: A Circular Economy Story, by Ken Webster and Alex Duff.
Ken Webster, one of the circular economy’s leading thinkers, and creative writer Alex Duff teamed up to offer us a different way of looking at the problems of our modern economy unset out ideas for a restorative alternative. It’s an intriguing, thought-provoking book that tackles key issues including the use of personal data, digital currency, the rise of the ‘rentier class’ and the future of food.
Mirella Ferraz is co-founder of Share Shed, the world’s first travelling library of things. The Share Shed van visits rural communities, so people can borrow a wide range of useful things, including tools, household appliances, camping and gardening equipment, sewing machines, suitcases and much more!
Share Shed aims to
• Help people save money, space and resources, and reduce clutter
• Build bridges between people’s needs and wants and the resources already available in their community
• Support more collaborative and sustainable lifestyles and inspire people to engage in social change
Mirella Ferraz has worked for over 10 years at the Network of Wellbeing, which supports Share Shed, and she is proud to set up and run community projects that support the wellbeing of people and the planet. Mirella grew up in Brazil, and currently lives in Devon, UK.
We find out how Share Shed works in practice, and how it’s been evolving as it expands to serve more communities – including finding was to make the service more convenient for those who can’t make it to the Shed’s pick up and drop off locations and schedule.
Mirella tells us how perceptions and attitudes are changing, too – for a variety of reasons.
People’s priorities are changing, as we realise more stuff doesn’t make us happier– so how can businesses thrive by doing better, with less?
In this episode, Catherine suggests it’s time to bust one of the myths of the modern economy – people don’t want more and stuff! Priorities are changing, people are realising that more stuff doesn’t make us happier. Instead, people are discovering that life is better when we care for, share and treasure our stuff, and what’s more, that’s better for our planet and society.
But this presents a big challenge – a paradox – how can businesses succeed without selling more stuff, every year? Many of the Circular Economy Podcast guests are already doing just that, using circular strategies to thrive by doing better with less.
You probably already have big questions on this. It feels logical to say that new designs and innovations will always make life better, that people want to keep up with trends and the status that comes from having the latest thing,
And of course, that making new products underpins the success of a business … but Catherine shares research and insights from guests in the last series of podcasts to show why we need to question conventional wisdom, and choose alternative strategies that are fit for the current business landscape.
This is the 2nd part of the conversation with Ken Webster, one of the foremost thinkers in the circular economy field, where we explore concepts for a critical aspect that’s being ignored – the economy itself!
In this episode, we go deeper into the possibilities offered by a universal basic dividend, especially as we move to a world where artificial intelligence might completely change the nature of work.
Ken mentions his work with Earth4all, supporting the discourse and new thinking marking the 50th anniversary of the Club of Rome’s ground-breaking Limits to Growth report.
We move on to Ken’s mission to make these concepts easier to grasp and to help people get excited, plus the importance of getting really clear on the core idea, before trying to make this work in practical terms.
Ken explains the overlaps between the thinking around circular economy and complex, adaptive systems and highlights some of the glaring faultlines in mainstream economic thinking.
That leads us back to the Commons and regenerative and open systems, together with the key questions that should be at the heart of designing circular products, components and materials,
And we finish by hearing a bit more about Ken’s most recent books, including ABC&D: Creating a Regenerative Circular Economy for All – co-written with Craig Johnson, and his latest book, The Wonderful Circles of Oz: A Circular Economy Story, written with Alex Duff.
If you haven’t already, please do listen to the previous episode to hear Ken talk about the Universal Basic Dividend (not Universal Basic Income), and the importance of reviving the concepts of commoning, and the Commons.
This episode is different – I’m talking to Ken Webster and we explore some big themes and concepts for a critical part of the circular economy that often gets ignored – the economy itself!
Catherine says: Ken Webster is right up there as one of my circular economy heroes, and is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost thinkers in the field. From 2010 – 2018, Ken was Head of Innovation for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, shaping current concepts of a ‘circular economy’.. Ken also co-wrote the book that first opened my eyes to the circular economy back in 2011 – Sense and Sustainability, co-written with Craig Johnson.
One of Ken’s best-known books, The Circular Economy: A Wealth of Flows, relates the connections between systems thinking, economic and business opportunity and the transition to a circular economy.
I’m very keen to read one of Ken’s most recent books, co-written with Alex Duff. Ken and Alex use a storytelling approach based on the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to offer a new and compelling narrative about the future direction of our economy, calling for macro-economic system redesign. It’s called The Wonderful Circles of Oz: A Circular Economy Story – you’ll find links in the shownotes.
Ken’s written several more thought-provoking works on the circular economy, including ABC+D: Creating a Regenerative Circular Economy for All – also co-written with Craig Johnson, and we mention some of these as we go along.
This was a wide-ranging conversation about system-scale issues and concepts. I tried my best to keep up with Ken’s thinking as we explored some of the big ideas he has been working on, including:
• A Universal Basic Dividend – not to be confused with UBI, or Universal Basic Income. We discuss why a Universal Basic Dividend would be a good thing, how it would be funded and where the money would flow to.
• We move onto The Commons – what that really means, and how it could be better accommodated in our modern economies, in a meaningful and sustainable way.
• Ken talks about the rentier economy, and rentiers. If you’re not familiar with that term, it’s someone who earns income from capital without working – for example by owning property or land that is rented out to tenants; by owning shares or bonds that pay dividends or interest, and so on.
• We discuss why the economy isn’t working for the vast majority of people around the world, and what’s getting in the way of an ‘economy for all’.
• We talk about some of the signals for change, with people are starting to see the potential of a future with community, connection and caring – caring for each other, and for our Mother Earth. The potential of a future that’s not all about ‘Work, Buy, Consume, Die’.
I’ve split our conversation into two parts – the 2nd part will be out next week as a bonus episode.
We’re exploring the broader context of a future-fit economy, asking questions like:
How do we create the conditions for circular solutions to gain traction? What’s holding us back, particularly when we think about our economic systems, and the way companies are set up?
In today’s episode, I’m talking to Paddy Le Flufy about his book, Building Tomorrow: Averting Environmental Crisis With a New Economic System, which was published in March 2023. Paddy’s aim is to work out how we can improve our own society AND improve the lives of the billions of people currently affected by the dominant global systems.
In A Circular Economy Handbook, I included a chapter on Enablers and Accelerators for the circular economy, and today we’re going to explore a couple of important ideas that fit into those categories – concepts that aren’t circular in themselves, but are important ways to help circular approaches have even more impact.
Before embarking on this project, in 2015, Paddy had a somewhat different life. After a degree in mathematics at Cambridge University then qualifying as an accountant at KPMG in London, he lived something of a double life. He worked as a finance specialist in London for six months at a time, but then used his money to live in remote places, alongside people whose lives were drastically different from his own – and we’ll hear a bit more about that later.
Paddy’s book is featured on the 2023 Financial Times Best Book of Summer reading list, and has earned praise from Jeremy Lent.
“The book aims directly at creating systemic change by providing people with both a holistic vision of a new economic system and the tools with which to build it… Positive real-world examples and potential future developments show how people throughout society can help build the new system. Those that do will be creating a better world.”
Paddy will give us an overview of the 6 themes in the book, one of which is the circular economy, and we’ll then go a bit deeper with a couple of them, exploring different forms of company structures and learning more about regenerative organisations.
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