The Circular Economy Show Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

The food industry is one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity loss and accounts for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. But what if food could be designed to regenerate nature rather than harming it? 

That’s the vision behind the Big Food Redesign Challenge. 

In this episode of The Circular Economy Show, our guest host Lucy Parker, Senior Partner and Sustainable Business Global Lead at Brunswick Group, explores how we can take learnings from the Challenge to create a food system that is better for people, nature and climate.

We hear from:

• Jonquil Hackenberg, CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, who shares insights about the Big Food Redesign Challenge and what it has helped achieve
• Wendy Schmidt, President and Co-Founder of the Schmidt Family Foundation, who supported the Challenge, explores the power of philanthropy as a catalyst for innovation
• Douglas McMaster, Michelin-starred chef and owner of the world’s first zero waste restaurant, Silo, who was a participant in the Challenge, tells us why it’s important to ask the question ‘what if we could do the whole thing differently?’

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review or a comment on Spotify or YouTube. Your support helps us to spread the word about the circular economy.

Learn more about the Big Food Redesign Challenge and explore products that keep nature in mind. 

Find out more about the Challenge participants, or watch a video version of this episode, on our YouTube channel.

Circular design is a hot topic, but moving beyond the buzzwords to practical implementation can be a real challenge. In this episode, we go deep with Joe Iles, Head of Design Activation at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to unpack the essential principles and skills every designer should have in their toolkit.

Joe shares a compelling perspective on circular design - it's not just about creating durable products, but rather reflecting the complex, interconnected systems that make up our world. He explores why circular design ideas often struggle to scale, despite the abundance of innovative concepts out there.

He also shares the key design competencies that are crucial for driving the transition to a circular model, from systems thinking to prototyping and collaboration. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review or a comment on Spotify or YouTube. Your support helps us to spread the word about the circular economy.

Links mentioned in this episode:

• The Circular Design Guide
• The Jeans Redesign
• The Circular Buildings Toolkit
• From ambition to action: an adaptive strategy for circular design

When we talk about durable materials, products, and services, what do we really mean? This episode unpacks the physical and emotional dimensions of durability and explores how this key design principle can help set circular business models up for long-term success. 

Would you like to know more about Back Market, the circular business model example mentioned in this episode? Listen to our episode 126: Changing the way we buy and use technology with Back Market.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review or a comment on Spotify or YouTube. Your support helps us to spread the word about the circular economy. 

The Foundation’s Big Food Redesign report showcases the possibility of healthier food that provides greater resilience, better outcomes for farmers, all whilst contributing to the efforts to reverse biodiversity loss and tackle climate change. In this episode of the podcast, we speak with Gaelle Le Gelard from the Foundation, Andy Cato and George Lamb from Wildfarmed who are actively practices regenerative agriculture on over 100 farms, and Guus Ter Haar from ReNature. 

In part one of a four part series on this podcast, we are revisiting some of the highlights from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Innovation Day event at the Roundhouse on March 31st. Hear how circular economy innovation that is regenerative by design can be better for the economy, reverse biodiversity loss and tackle climate change.

In this episode, we explore topics including life-friendly chemistry, optimising materials using AI, and how we can develop and scale biomaterial use. Alysia Garmulewicz — the Founder of Materiom, and Associate Professor of High Tech Entrepreneurship at the Facultad de Administración y Economía, Universidad de Santiago de Chile — joins us to explain more.

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Visit Materiom's website

Watch Alysia speaking at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Summit 21

Learn more about the Foundation

All the food we eat is designed. Food brands and supermarkets design everything we eat — how it looks and tastes, and how good it is for us and for nature. The top ten food brands and supermarkets influence 40% of agricultural land use in the UK and EU — which means they have the power to make nature-positive food the norm.

So, what do we mean by ‘regenerative natural systems’ — and how does it tackle global challenges including climate change and biodiversity loss?

In this episode, Patrick Holden, Founding Director of the Sustainable Food Trust, joins us to discuss the role of leading food companies in adopting regenerative agricultural practices, the role of farmers, and the role of policy and finance in supporting the scaled transformation towards regenerative farming — plus the need for clear metrics and labelling to help consumers understand how nature-friendly their food is.

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Watch Patrick in conversation with the Foundation's Emma Chow

Catch up on the 'Fix the economy, fix the climate' session from Summit 21

Find out more about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

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The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted that linear supply chains in a linear economy are brittle and vulnerable to shocks. In this episode, Bill McRaith — the former CSO of PVH, the US company that owns fashion brands including Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger — explains how the circular economy offers opportunities to transition from fragile supply chains to more resilient supply ‘lattices.’

Tune in to hear Bill’s advice to companies that are trying to restructure their supply chains — and the change in mindset it requires in global boardrooms.

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Learn more about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Watch Bill speaking at the Foundation's Summit21

Explore how the circular economy offers a recovery strategy from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

Why are we still demolishing buildings when we can design for deconstruction? In this episode, Arup structural engineer Grace Di Benedetto explains that we need to change our mindset and recognise buildings as valuable sources of materials rather than rubble.

Together, we discuss material passports and the structural engineering opportunities offered by the circular economy.

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Find out more about a circular economy for the built environment

Watch Grace on the Circular Economy Show

Learn more about the work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Renewable energy is vital in order to address climate change, but it’s only half the story. Almost half of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the way we make and use things — we need a circular economy to tackle those emissions and achieve the targets set out in the Paris Agreement.

In this episode, Ellen MacArthur is joined by Christiana Figueres, Global Optimism Co-founder and former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Together, they discuss the crucial role of the circular economy in the fight against climate change, financing climate action, Christiana’s role in the Paris Agreement — and why we should be optimistic about the future.

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Find out more about circular economy and climate change

Follow Christiana on Twitter

Hear Ellen on the Global Optimism podcast

Learn more about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation

This week, governments from United Nations member states are meeting in Nairobi to negotiate a legally binding UN Treaty on plastic pollution. This is an unprecedented opportunity to build on the already successful voluntary agreements towards a circular economy for plastics

The time to act is now. With over two million people, almost 1000 civil society organisations, and over 100 global companies calling for a UN Treaty on plastic pollution, we must seize this opportunity.

In this episode, Laura Franco Henao is joined by Eirik Lindebjerg, the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Global Plastic Policy Manager, who has been a key player in the campaign calling for the UN Treaty. Together, they explore what a successful treaty would look like.

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Find out more about the Foundation's collaboration with the WWF on this campaign

Learn more about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation