Happy Porch Radio

In season six of Happy Porch Radio, we are talking about the circular economy across the African continent. Today, we are excited to be joined by Chris Whyte, the co-founder of the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN) where he currently serves as an executive team member. His work examines the developing circular economy applications across Africa, with a particular focus on transitioning to a circular economy where waste is a resource. In our conversation with Chris, we delve into the massive potential for development that the circular economy provides across the African continent and how ACEN is working to implement and support existing circular economies. Tuning in you’ll hear examples of their work including the development of compressive blocks that provide an innovative solution to housing in Africa by using plastic waste while also having a massively reduced carbon footprint compared to cement. Chris explains the impact that Eurocentric models and aspirations have had on African infrastructure, incl

In season six of Happy Porch Radio, we are talking about the circular economy across the African continent. Today, we welcome Joanna Bingham and Deborah Nartey of Footprints Africa to provide us with some really powerful context to set the scene for a new season. Footprints Africa is an organization that supports small and medium-sized businesses to adopt future-friendly practices, address the challenges of growth, and create new jobs, while using supply chains as a tool for development. In this episode, Joanna and Deborah share some insights on the work and research that their team is working on, going on to provide three examples of powerful entrepreneurial projects that embody the circular economy in Africa: Ecodudu, Kaluku Wear, and Pyramid Recycling. We touch on power dynamics, parallel evolution, and the exploitation of Africa’s rich resources as an essential framing context. Next, we dive into the role of perception in shaping behavior and how decentralized systems of repair are valued by certain cultu

This is a little teaser for the next season, which is coming in the next few months. We've had a bit of a break after Season Five, and we're really excited about what's coming next! African entrepreneurship, enthusiasm and innovation can create solutions that work in the local context and cultures. Opportunities that can be harnessed to tackle climate change and reduce environmentally damaging consequences while also improving livelihoods and reducing poverty. In this season we speak to people actively using innovative circular approaches in different African contexts. We share their stories to gain an insight into the Circular Economy across Africa and what we can learn for our own contexts.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the final show of Happy Porch Radio Season 5. Today, we look at this past season, highlighting each of our guests, how they’re changing the world, and some of the pertinent details about them. A few of the main topics and themes we covered in this season were keeping things in use, reuse, and services. One overriding theme, though, was how holistic the circular economy is, and why we need a combination of many solutions to create a better world. To finish off the episode, we talk about some of the biggest takeaways from this season, as well as our hopes for our listeners. See you next season!

Reath is on a mission to build the digital infrastructure required for businesses to shift to the circular economy.  They specialise in the tagging and tracking of reusable assets, and building the “digital passports” they need – think Google Analytics for the circular economy! Co-founders, Claire Rampen and Emily Rogers combined their professional backgrounds in operations and commercial strategy in technology businesses to help other companies adopt  and improve their reuse business models. The Reath platform helps businesses do this while staying compliant, generating insights, creating new revenue opportunities, and identifying savings. Learn from Claire and Emily how they discovered the challenges brands had in reusing their packaging effectively and legally, and how they joined forces to tackle those challenges and become actively involved in the solution. Hear about how the Reath team have had to jump off multiple cliffs, apply for multiple grants, and solve multiple problems, as well as how their coll

The pandemic has given us the time to redesign our business processes and move us toward a circular economy. As today’s guest, Unusual Rigging Managing Director Tom Harper explains, our industries are having a “Phoenix in the flame moment.” Our conversation with Tom focuses on his passion for the circular economy, how he introduced sustainable innovations into his company, and the challenges and opportunities presented by COVID. Early in the episode, we explore Tom’s career and how he transitioned from being an actor to studying an MBA on the circular economy — and then finally joining Unusual Rigging. After touching on why his MBA was such an incredible program, we dive into how he introduced sustainable practices into Unusual Rigging’s asset tracking procedure. Tom shares specific details on how digitising their products allowed them to offer their products-as-a-service, leading to longer product life cycles and material reusability. We reflect on the power of one-on-one conversations and involving your emp

Bright colours might be in, but fashion and glamour have a dark side, with textiles and accessories being a major contributor to environmental damage. Today we speak with Aisling Byrne, co-founder of Nuw, a clothes-swapping app built on community ideals. We open the conversation by taking a look at Nuw’s inception, as Aisling details the characteristics of fast fashion and why it’s so important to adopt a new model of fashion. Aisling then rips the sheet off and exposes a problem which hides in many of our cupboards. She goes on to explain the toxic creation process that goes into creating the 100 billion new pieces of fashion and glamour that are made every year, before touching on the broader impacts of this industry. You’ll learn about the production methods behind cotton, silk and polyester, and how each has a consequence on water consumption as well as on chemical and plastic pollution. We then look at the end of fashion and glamour’s lifecycle, as Aisling touches on landfills and supplies us with startl

Did you know that 99% of the things we buy are thrown away within 12 months of purchase? When it comes to pollution, the world is in a post-crisis state, and recycling alone won’t be enough to bring us out of it. Yet, Stephen Clarke says that we can start taking achievable and cost-effective measures to reverse our damage. As the Head of Communications at TerraCycle and Loop Europe, Stephen argues that a zero-waste concept is the answer to pollution. In this episode, we talk with Stephen about TerraCycle and how it’s able to recycle virtually anything, as well as its new shopping platform, Loop.  We open the conversation by taking a look at the current pollution problem before diving into detail about Loop’s great effort to not only reduce waste but to eradicate it. You’ll hear about how the Loop ecosystem works, with Stephen touching on big-name companies they’ve partnered up with, what kinds of packaging materials they use, and how their delivery system operates. Stay tuned as Stephen talks about how Loop u

The vast majority of material resources are lost into landfill or leaked into the environment after consumption. Some companies see a real opportunity to bring together the biggest global brands across a variety of industries, using insights and data intelligence to understand the impact of materials throughout their lifecycle and create a more sustainable future. Welcome back to Season 5 of Happy Porch Radio, which is concerned with digital solutions in the circular economy. Today’s guest is Michael Groves, CEO and Founder of Topolytics, a leading data insights business that uses machine learning and geospatial analytics to make the world’s waste visible, verifiable, and valuable. In this episode, Michael addresses why data is a waste problem and the opportunity that Topolytics has seen in the waste industry to use data in a better and more sustainable way in the future. Michael shares how his company plans to do this, from the tools they use to aggregate, clean, and analyse data, to the industries they addr

Continuing our exciting exploration of the circular economy, we are joined by Ellekari Klaasse and Mariëlle van Hemert, the brains behind Circular Stories. The organisation is a magazine and online platform for the sharing of inspiring stories of companies and individuals in the circular space. Our guests see their role as connectors in the greater picture of circularity and by promoting these examples, they can help both the brands they work with and others who connect with their content. They have a strong focus on the human aspect of what they do, aiming to show the person behind the story and their work has an emphasis on aiding the entrepreneurs they work with, creating media that can be used for funding or growth in other areas. We have a fascinating chat with Ellekari and Mariëlle, covering their personal backgrounds, perspectives on the circular economy at present, and the lessons they have learned in the time since starting their exciting project. What began as a journey of exploration, two new frien

Along with some of the other big problems with the fast fashion industry, the incredibly high volume of textile waste is a major one. These materials end up burned or buried, but there is one company here to rescue them, resurrecting an age-old model to try and solve it in a brand new way. Today’s guest is Stephanie Benedetto, a corporate attorney turned fashion tech and sustainability entrepreneur. Stephanie is the Co-Founder of Queen of Raw, a marketplace to buy and sell unused textiles, keeping them out of landfills, and turning pollution into profit. Prior to starting Queen of Raw, Stephanie worked as a lawyer in the fashion, media and entertainment, startup, and technology industries, and co-founded a sustainable textile manufacturing facility. In this episode, Stephanie describes the two-sided marketplace they use to buy and sell dead stock, and the additional background technology that allows businesses to understand where their waste is and what it is, in real-time. She also talks about the digitisati

In this episode of Happy Porch Radio, we speak with a circular economy pioneer and the co-founder of Circular IQ, Roy Vercoulen. Circular IQ helps their customers to transition towards a restorative and regenerative circular economy through their digital platform and circularity programs. One of their many successes includes having developed the CTI Tool for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, allowing businesses to measure their circuit performance using a framework that is globally recognised. Roy explains why measuring circularity is imperative and what components they look for in pursuit of this objective, and gives his perspective on the extent to which governments, businesses, and consumers are responsible for sustainability. On the topic of their biggest challenges, Roy talks about the financial implications of circularity, why many companies are still reluctant to transition, and what cultural barriers they have to overcome to get their clients’ buy-in. Listeners will learn more ab

The impact that the circular economy would have is so broad that no single conversation can quite cover its reach. Today’s conversation with Craig Melson, Program Manager at techUK, touches on many topics, proving an excellent overview of how technology is moving us towards the circular economy. We open by talking about Craig’s role and what techUK is doing to help the tech industry embrace more sustainable practices. Craig then shares examples of innovative tech companies that are driving material reusability, or even basing their entire model on circular economy practices. From data privacy concerns to the dangers of dealing with pollutants, we discuss the biggest challenges blocking our progress to a circular economy. After touching on the Material Focus project, Craig provides insight into how government regulation and Brexit affect circular economy practices. Following this, he expresses his optimism about how companies are heading in the right direction along with his hope that the circular economy will

Achieving sustainability requires that companies know what’s in their product, know their suppliers, and understand their direct and indirect environmental impact. By digitising the life cycles of products and supply chains, iPoint is driving industry transparency and empowering business to achieve sustainability. T Today we speak with iPoint CEO Joerg Walden about how digitising processes is a key step towards the circular economy. Early in our conversation, Joerg highlights how expanding knowledge around digitising life cycles can drive new business models. A significant theme this episode, Joerg shares how a mindset shift, and not only tech, is critical in fostering sustainable practices. We then discuss the challenges presented by innovation-based product cycles before diving into the intersectional nature of product design, and how only a shared information system can ensure product compliance. A tricky subject for many organisations, Jorge explains the strategic benefits of becoming more transparent and

As-a-service business models align the priorities of the vendor and the customer, while also having the potential to drive sustainability and the circular economy.  Today’s guest is Dave Mackerness, Customer Success Lead at Kaer, a firm based in Singapore that sells air conditioning as-a-service throughout Asia. We talk to Dave about how Kaer has shifted to the as-a-service rubric and in so doing has baked sustainability and circularity into their business model while driving their profits higher at the same time! Dave talks about the history of the firm and the different models they have adopted over the decades, and how they decided to put all the data they have gathered to a different use after drawing inspiration from the world of SaaS. Dave discusses what this looks like in real terms, explaining how Kaer installs air cooling systems in the buildings of their clients and sells them cool air, rather than the systems themselves. This approach has allowed Kaer to use data to build more efficient systems, sa

 In circular economy terms, reverse logistics involves the collection of goods, transportation to a given location, and sorting prior to remanufacturing, refurbishing, reusing or recycling or failing that, disposal. Today, we are joined by Paul McSweeney, who is the Founder and CEO of the ZeroNet, an app that allows households to simply and quickly donate unwanted items and have them collected right from their front door. In this episode, Paul shares his long-story-short with us, getting to the point of having launched a pilot in Stirling, Scotland, and an upcoming project in Brighton in the UK. We also discuss what the platform looks like, recycling versus reuse, data recovery when it comes to e-waste, and the surprising householder enthusiasm for a collections service like this, as well as what has kept Paul motivated throughout the development and whether or not he thinks ZeroNet could encourage excess consumption. For all this and more, make sure to tune in today!

When many people think of the word ‘waste,’ something formless and brown springs to mind. Part of the struggle to eliminate waste is that the materials it consists of don’t have an identity. Today we speak with Pablo van den Bosch, the co-founder of Madaster, a company that shows how valuable waste is by identifying its material components in the built environment. After explaining Madaster’s role in advocating for the circular economy, Pablo describes how they catalogue all the materials used to create a new building, giving each material its own ‘digital passport.’ We chat about how his biggest challenge is to get people to recognize the importance of registering their materials and how this benefits both the public and investors. We then ask Pablo about Madaster’s philosophy. His answer highlights his view that Earth is a closed system — it’s up to us to make the most of the resources we have. We discuss Madaster’s data-driven model, why they operate as a platform, and how everyday home-owners can use Mada

Understanding waste as something valuable not only requires new systems but massive paradigm shifts too. Today we talk to Maayke Damen about the work she is doing in this regard with her company, Excess Materials Exchange, a digital marketplace with the core goal of matching waste with its highest reuse assignation. Maayke tells us about the research she began to do about taxing resources rather than labour and the potential this shift would present in the way products are purchased and disposed of. To tax in this new way, we would need a system to correctly identify the materials that make up products, and the work Maayke did to create this system was what led her to found EME. From there, we dive into the inner workings of the EME marketplace platform and how it functions to identify waste and match it with its highest reuse destination. Along with all this, we talk to Maayke about the challenges to implementing more circular waste management processes, highlighting the paradigm shift required for these shi

The move toward a more circular economy is contingent on many things – transparent supply chains being one of them. Here to talk about how he is using technology such as blockchain to bring transparency and trusted data sharing to global supply chains is Jordi de Vos, Co-Founder of Circularise. We kick things off with Jordi talking about the research that Circularise was born from before getting into the challenges of moving from local pilot projects to tracing supply chains globally. We talk about resolving the seemingly contradictory aims of bringing transparency to supply chains while keeping information private as well as the issue of trust and how easy it is for companies to lie about the origins of a given product. Next up, we take a dive into how Circularise works, hearing Jordi describe how it uses blockchain technology to create an information highway where a ‘digital twin’ of a product is created at its conception and then updated as it makes its way from one point to another. Jordi also explains h

The ultimate ‘out of sight, out of mind problem,’ when we throw something away, it seems to disappear into a magical space that sits apart from us and our responsibility. Tom Passmore and Sophie Walker, founders of Dsposal, are using data to bridge this knowledge gap by showing people what happens to waste once we throw it away. On this episode, We speak to Tom and Sophie about their journey in building Dsposal and their mission in innovating waste management for the greater good. After talking about how waste is part of a value-chain of resources within the circular economy, we explore the ‘duty of care.’ A key concept, this duty affirms our responsibility to properly manage our waste. On the topic of the circular economy, they explain their focus on compliance and regulation as using non-licensed contractors increases the likelihood that material ends up in a landfill — and therefore, out of the loop. Near the end of the episode, we talk about the state’s role in creating infrastructure and how it’s up to