Circular Economy Podcast

Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty have written a brilliant book called Designing Tomorrow: strategic design tactics to change your practice, organization and planetary impact, published earlier this year. Martin Tomitsch is a Professor and Head of the Transdisciplinary School at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). As a design academic and educator, Martin advocates for the transformative power of design to envision speculative futures and drive positive change. He has written lots of academic articles and seven books, including Making Cities Smarter and Design Think Make Break Repeat. Steve Baty was the inaugural CEO of the Australian Design Council, co-founder of Meld Studios and co-founder of UX Australia. He is a Director of the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence and served two years as the President of the Interaction Design Association. Steve focuses on the integration between strategic design and traditional architectural practice, especially for improving our public spaces, infrastructure and services. You might be noticing interest around supporting responsible innovation in ways that consider all life – human and other-than-human. That might be badged as life-centred, regenerative or post-anthropocentric design, and Martin Tomitsch and Steve Baty say these approaches share an important goal, to ‘reach an operational status where human activity no longer exceeds the planetary limits.’ In Designing Tomorrow, Martin and Steve bring together several design philosophies, to help designers, strategists and policymakers amplify their impact, shift their perspectives and empower them to create lasting positive change inside organizations. We’ll talk about some of the concepts and tools they introduce in the book, why we need to carefully consider who is involved in a system and the broader implications of our design decisions, and ways to change our mindsets – including about stakeholders, our sphere of influence and how to think about strategic decisions.

Loic Le Fouest is a leading expert in Customer Experience (CX) with a strong track record of driving customer-centric transformation across the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. As the head of the CX practice at Clarasys in the UK, Loic helps organisations design customer experiences that drive loyalty, innovation, and sustainable business growth. Clarasys describes itself as The Experience Consultancy — employee-owned, purpose-driven, and dedicated to helping organisations create better experiences for customers, employees, and the planet. Clarasys recognises that circular economy approaches often require fundamentally different relations between providers and users, and it’s keen to understand more about that. In 2022, Loic launched a partnership between Clarasys and the University of Exeter’s Centre for the Circular Economy to tackle what they saw as one of the biggest challenges in circularity — customer engagement. This collaboration led to a report and toolkit on Creating Customer Experiences in the Circular Economy, providing businesses with practical strategies to make circular models work for their customers. Loic is an experienced transformation consultant with over 10 years of consulting and industry experience, and he combines design thinking with his background in product management, digital transformation, lean 6-sigma and change management. Loic shares insights from Clarasys' collaboration with the Exeter team, which looked at how businesses were dealing with challenges around user adoption and acceptance across the food and beverage and household appliances sectors. The research team looked at the new aspects of roles, behaviour and relationships for consumers/, and Loic explains some of the key findings around that, including ‘consumption work’ and ‘key moments that matter’ for customers. The study also found that firms were struggling to launch and scale successful circular business models, and Loic talks about two kinds of approaches to that - ‘inside out’ versus ‘outside in’.

We hear insights from Anette Timmer of DESSO by Tarkett, a leading carpet brand that was an early adopter of circular economy principles. Anette Timmer began her journey with DESSO almost 18 years ago, and has played a central role in the business’ transition to a circular economy model. Anette helps to bridge the gap between the vision and execution of circular transformation, using marketing and communications to educate audiences about circularity; develop stakeholder trust and transparency; inspire behaviour change among customers; and build advocacy and momentum across the wider industry. Anette is a strong advocate for cross-industry collaboration, where businesses share experiences, and work together to create systems to circulate products and materials. DESSO is now part of Tarkett, and has a long-held belief in designing with people and planet in mind, and over a decade ago, it made a bold commitment to place circularity at the core of its ambitions.

Moving towards a closed-loop system has involved a total change of mindset within the business. DESSO calls its commitment the Beauty of Circularity, and it drives the business to do more with less at every stage. - Annette unpacks the three pillars of Desso's beauty of circularity strategy: designing products to live multiple lives; developing innovative materials that are made to be remade; and building systems to return flooring at end of life to complete the circular journey. And sometimes, synchronicity steps in to lend a hand!

Markus Terho tells us about the Lifestyle Test, a web-based app for anyone who’s concerned about global warming and wants to be a part of the solution by adopting a positive and sustainable lifestyle. It’s already available in 10 countries across the EU and has 350,000 users. Markus describes himself as a corporate responsibility veteran, with over three decades in the industry. He is the CEO of Sparkter, a boutique sustainability consultancy to help simplify and make sense of sustainability. Before that, Markus was the chief sustainability officer at Nokia and has been a director at the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. Markus is passionate about helping people to find their own way to build a good life that is also sustainable. Almost 70 per cent of Europe’s climate emissions and almost all of the damage to nature can be traced back to people’s everyday lives – how we eat, live, move around and consume. In less than 10 minutes, The Lifestyle Test gives you clear and tailored tips about simple positive and sustainable lifestyle changes that can help you save time and money and improve your quality of life. Markus explains how the test was first developed and how it’s evolved since, and explains some of the ways it’s been shaped for each different country it’s in. He goes onto explain what kind of things it covers and how it works from a user’s perspective, including the high proportion of circular economy suggested actions. Markus highlights the way conversations about climate often result in feelings of guilt and shame, and how the app is designed to help us feel we have agency, with some insights from well-established models for successful behaviour change. And we hear what’s in the pipeline for future developments, including ways to link more sustainable behaviours to other primary motivators, such as health or convenience.

Clarissa Morawski, CEO of Reloop Platform works with governments, industry stakeholders and NGOs to develop policies for a packaging circular economy. Clarissa brings nearly 30 years of technical, analytical and communications experience in waste reduction operations and policies. She started her own consulting business in 1998 and co-founded the Reloop Platform in 2015. As CEO, Clarissa works with stakeholders and partners to develop smart, practical and effective policy frameworks and operational recommendations, and combines her no-nonsense communication skills with science to make the case for ambitious policy. Reloop Platform's mission is to accelerate the global transition to a circular economy by working at the centre of policy-making with governments, industry stakeholders and NGOs. Reloop’s primary objective is to prevent waste, by reducing production and consumption, re-using packaging wherever possible and collecting materials properly for closed loop recycling. We talk about a recent report, the Global Recycling League Table, that Reloop produced in partnership with Eunomia; and Clarissa highlights key elements of the recent EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulations. Clarissa shares some insights on how to make sure policies actually make a difference and don’t get sabotaged by various vested interests; we hear how mindsets are changing, and brands are starting to see litter as a real issue. We discuss Deposit Return Schemes and which ones are seen as best-practice, and we cover some of the issues affecting the safety of virgin and recycled packaging materials.