Circulab – Details, episodes & analysis

"How can third place act to promote a Circular Economy? " with Annelise Meyer, co-founder of the third place L'Alternateur,  based in Champigny-sur-Marne, near Paris, and a member of the Circulab community since 2019.

In this podcast, Annelise talks about the concept of third places, theorized in 1989 and highly popular today in France.

Annelise shares the challenges she and her associate faced when creating her third place. She explains how they plan to use L'Alternateur as a channel to promote circularity and sustainability practices toward the local community and beyond.

Following references are mentioned :
- Seats2meet, a network of workspaces where people can work for free while committing to share skills with one another: https://www.seats2meet.com/

- The book where the founder of Seats2meet explains everything is available for free online: “The SerendipityMachine - A Disruptive Business Model for Society 3.0”

- The Transition Network, founded by Rob Hopkins: https://transitionnetwork.org/

- The REConomy Centre, a third place that was created by members of the Transition network in Totnes and inspired us a lot on our own project: https://reconomycentre.org/

- The Coworking Assembly, a network federating independent coworking spaces around Europe whose core values are community, openness, sustainability, collaboration & accessibility: https://coworkingassembly.eu/about/

- The Website of L’Alternateur: www.lalternateur.net (for those who speak French 😉)

"How is Canadian sustainability awareness seen through a European lens?" By Colienne Regout, a Circular Economy facilitator, currently focusing on core-businesses' strategies and packaging, and member of Circulab since 2019.

In this podcast,  Colienne shares with us her impressions of her arrival in Canada and some differences on Circular Economy she noticed with her country of origin: Belgium. She gives us the keys to understand the current situation. By listening to this podcast, you will discover many canadian initiatives and inspirations proposed by Colienne.

Following references are mentioned :
- Colienne Regout's website : https://www.look4loops.com/

- Colienne’s podcast 'Unboxing your packaging' : https://www.look4loops.com/podcast

- The Light House (https://www.light-house.org/) and its National Industrial - -Symbiosis Program: http://nispcanada.ca/

- BizBiz Share Canada: https://bizbizshare.com/
 -First Canadian CE funds: https://www.fondaction.com/nouvelles/lancement-fonds-economie-circulaire/
-‘Think Thrice about your clothes', a Metro Vancouver campaign in 2019: http://www.metrovancouver.org/thinkthrice
-The Lighter Living Initiative https://www.sfu.ca/sfuwoodwards/events/events1/2019-Fall/lighter-living-one-earth.html from the Think-and-Do Tank -OneEarth’ https://www.oneearthweb.org/
-The ‘S.H.I.F.T.ing Consumer Project’ https://www.sharereuserepair.org/uploads/1/2/3/5/123584632/shifting_consumer_outreach_deck_final.pdf inspired by SITRA (https://www.sitra.fi/en/) and launched by Share Reuse Repair Initiative https://www.sharereuserepair.org/

-The Brand Battle for Good, Virtual Conference and Hack-a-thon in April 28 & May 5, 2021 https://www.brandsforbetter.ca/brand-battle-for-good-facilitators/

- National Zero waste council, a Metro Vancouver Initiative

- The Circular Economy Leadership Coalition: https://circulareconomyleaders.ca/

- the cluster Metal Tech Alley : https://metaltechalley.com/
- Canada Plastic Pact https://plasticspact.ca/

In this episode, Michel Wofstirn, Circulab certified consultant based in Oslo, Norway introduces the links between Biomimicry and Circular Economy. This engineer specialised in Energy is the Founder of Biomimicry Norway and works for several years on circular economy projects in Norway and other countries in Europe. By observing how living ecosystems evolve, Michel gives us great examples to reconsider our ways of designing things with a regenerative thinking. 

Here are the links Michel mentioned during the talk: 

- the Pine cones

- the humpbacks and bubble nets

- How Trees talk to eachother TED Talk

- the Mobius Project now to be apparently attributed to Yannic Peer as he no longer works with Michael Pawlyn

- Michael Pawlyn’s work in architecture

Today, we launch this new podcast with Andrew Thomson, Circulab Certified Consultant based in Perth, Australia. He is a great specialist of Systemic Design and Circular Economy, he explains us the links between these topics with enlighting examples. 

New episode of the Circulab podcast available !

How to persuade African entrepreneurs in a circular approach ?Hélène Guehenneuc is a freelance consultant based in Burkina Faso, manager of a Third Place called Mahna. She is part of Circulab since 2020.

In this podcast, Helene explores the challenges faced by the entrepreneurs she works with on a daily basis at Mahna. Through her experience, she identifies the main obstacles to action and the challenges faced by these entrepreneurs and proposes solutions to bring with the circular economy.

Hélène illustrates her experience with concrete examples and helps us to better understand the integration of circular economy in the creation of new activities.

Following references are mentioned :
Mahna : https://www.facebook.com/tierslieumahna/
Book 1: Frugal innovation by Navi Radjou
Book 2: Afrotopia by Felwine Sarre

Catherine is a consultant in low carbon circular approach. She helps companies in Europe and Asia design strategies of global sustainability.

 

In this podcast, Catherine, as a certified carbon auditor and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analyst, shares her experience and pictures the inbalance of our systems. Through her 15-year experience of accompanying companies, she explains how calculating eco-impacts of existing or to-be projects helps companies understand full lifecycles and costs, communicate on environmental added values, and harness sustainable innovations. She also shares on challenges shared by clients and on the limitations of carbon assessments and the need of global view on impacts.


Following references are mentioned :
- Catherine’s website : www.eco-sol.fr


- Blog by Olivier Remoissonnet, CEO of Bioseptyl, on the carbon footprint calculation of Bioseptyl's recycled plastic and wood toothbrushes, and the imported competition (bamboo and plastics): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/les-conclusions-de-notre-%25C3%25A9tude-empreinte-carbone-olivier-remoissonnet/?trackingId=CIw7y2MnQ3SVYxtmD4D2lQ%3D%3D
- 

A recently published article written by Catherine: https://direction-marketing.fr/que-nous-dit-leco-score/

In this podcast, Phoebe Blackburn, freelance Communications and Circular Economy expert, gives her insights from Berlin after leaving France back in 2016. She talks about how the world's 4th largest economy presents advantages - a strong engineering culture and a tradition of green innovation - and obstacles for a circular economy - a focus on waste management and technology, rather than ecodesign and waste reduction. No big surprise, given the country's waste industry was worth 70bn€ in 2018.

Germany doesn't yet have a Circular Economy roadmap, but it was the first country to legislate on the topic in 1994. It has an updated Packaging Law, VerpackG, the ProgRess resource optimisation programme, now in its third version, and in 2019 a comparative study by acatech and Systemiq looked at Germany's position among EU peers. But a clear, binding, inspiring and more holistic vision is still missing. What could be done to help shift to more circularity? Organisations (re)defining it for themselves, education at all levels, sharing success stories and 'co-petition' with other innovators to push the agenda forward, the EU's Green Deal.

Phoebe mentions the following actors in Berlin's circularity scene:

- FixFirst (repair of white goods)

- Stadtfarm (fish and vegetables in a closed loop in the city)

- BSR's 'NochMall' (second hand store run by the city's waste management company)

- TooGoodToGo (food waste app)

- hps (home energy generating solution)

and - it's Christmas soon - Wundertree: lease a Xmas tree and give it back for replanting afterwards!

Taco Snippen is a freelance consultant based in The Netherlands, expert of procurement & supply chains. He dedicates part of his work and consulting to circular economy, and joined Circulab in 2017; he was the first Certified Consultant in The Netherlands.

In this podcast dedicated to circular procurement, Taco Snippen talks about how private companies can create more values with the circular economy, and how public organizations can act through procurement to drive circular economy on their territories.

Taco illustrates with some examples and especially with some projects from The Netherlands. Finally, he also gives some insigths and advice to make it easier for private and public organizations to apply circular economy to procurement. One of them is: "Don’t aim to reach 100% circular, but try to dedicate 20% effort for 80% results."

We hope you will like it!

Rebecca Narewski has been part of the Circulab community since the beginning, in 2015 as Certified expert. She has been working in market research for 25 years, especially for the Cosmetics and Beauty Industry.

In this interview by Justine Laurent, she shares with us the current context and issues for the Cosmetic Industry and what should be the objectives of the Industry for the 21st Century. She talks about resilience, resource preservation and user experience and examples of project with multiple benefits.

Sunny Lee is Certified expert Circulab since 2017, and ambassador of the brand for Asia. She is working in Taiwan & China for developing a Circular Economy. Being the major place for manufacturing in the world, Asia can act. Sunny speaks about how manufacturers can lead the path to circular economy and become leaders of change among their industries.