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Ellen MacArthur Foundation

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation welcomes you to The Circular Economy Show, a podcast about a new way to design, make, and use things, and how we can build an economy that's fit for the 21st century.

The Circular Economy Show Podcast

In this episode of the Circular Economy Show we discuss Arda Biomaterials' journey of transforming beer by-products into sustainable materials. Brett Cotten, co-founder at Arda, details the company's origins, challenges, and successes, including raising pre-seed investment in 2023 and scaling operations. Amy Tsang from The Mills Fabrica highlights their 360-degree support for innovators, emphasising investment, collaboration, and showcasing technologies. Both discuss the importance of scalability, impact measurement, and the commercial viability of biomaterials, with Brett noting the potential of chemistry-based approaches and Amy highlighting innovative startups including Epoch Biodesign.

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.

What does it take to scale biomaterials?

Join Fin, Lou and Pippa from the Circular Economy Show as we look back at a year in the circular economy. 

In this episode, the team shares highlights from this year’s show, and talks about some of the moments you might have missed. 

Thanks for listening to the Circular Economy Show from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Help us grow our audience in 2025 by sharing your favourite episode with your friends and colleagues.

If you’d like to get in touch, email us at podcast@emf.org

Explore the episodes discussed:

Ep 159: How to build a nature-positive circular economy for Europe 

Read the paper.

Ep 157: Inside the world of industrial symbiosis 

Ep 149: Scaling refill and return with GoUnpackaged

We also mentioned our episode with Vincent from Dunia Bora - who features in episode 150: Creating nature-positive nutrition from cacti with Dunia Bora.

Watch the Redesigning Food Series, which Fin mentioned.

2024 in review: A year exploring the circular economy

The circular economy is inspired by living systems and one of the schools of thoughts that explores this model is Biomimicry. In this episode Michael Pawlyn explains why ecosystem thinking is key to a regenerative circular economy. Michael Pawlyn is director of the architecture practice Exploration and author of Biomimicry in Architecture

 

This podcast series presented by Colin Webster explores the recently published book A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy. Each programme features an interview with authors of the book’s chapters. These leading experts on architecture, agriculture, design, business or engineering, provide unique insights that reflect on the necessity to develop a whole-system approach to re-think our economy.

Michael Pawlyn - Ecosystems as a unifying model for cities and Industry

Remanufacturing allows us to use product components again at high quality while reducing energy demand by - in some cases - 80%. Given the material constraints we face, why this is not happening at a wider scale? In this episode, Nabil Nasr puts forward what he sees as the issues holding back remanufacturing. 

Nabil Nasr is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Director of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology; he is also founder of the Centre for Remanufacturing and Resource Recovery.

This podcast series presented by Colin Webster explores the recently published book A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy. Each programme features an interview with authors of the book’s chapters. These leading experts on architecture, agriculture, design, business or engineering, provide unique insights that reflect on the necessity to develop a whole-system approach to re-think our economy.

Remanufacturing and the circular economy

Our agriculture system is under a greater strain than ever before. The growth of global green yields has fallen behind global population growth, and artificial fertilisers and pesticides are reducing the soil's ability to renew. “We need to take a different direction”, say Martin Stuchtey and Morten Rossé, who explore ways to reshape our food system.

Martin Stuchtey is the Director of the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment.

Morten Rossé is an Expert Associate Principal with McKinsey’s Sustainability & Resource Productivity practice.

Towards a regenerative food system

How does a country go through a renewable energy transition? Well, no country has done it before and there is no blue print to follow, but Germany is leading the world in this front. In this episode Patrick Graichen provides a comprehensive picture of the situation and explores future developments. Patrick Graichen is executive director of Agora Energiewende, a think-tank and policy laboratory working towards the success of the energy transition or Energiewende. Listen to the previous episodes of _A New Dynamic podcast series _

_This podcast series presented by Colin Webster explores the recently published book A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy. Each programme features an interview with authors of the book’s chapters. These leading experts on architecture, agriculture, design, business or engineering, provide unique insights that reflect on the necessity to develop a whole-system approach to re-think our economy. _ Order your copy of A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy

The renewable energy transition - insight from Germany’s energiewende

What can traffic lights tell us about how our economy could work? It may seem a strange question to ask, but Dirk Helbing, is the person who makes the connection. In this episode, he explains what we can learn from complex dynamic systems and how that knowledge can help us understand and implement a feedback-rich circular economy. Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at ETH Zurich. Listen to the previous episodes of _A New Dynamic podcast series _

_This podcast series presented by Colin Webster explores the recently published book A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy. Each programme features an interview with authors of the book’s chapters. These leading experts on architecture, agriculture, design, business or engineering, provide unique insights that reflect on the necessity to develop a whole-system approach to re-think our economy. _ Order your copy of A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy

Lessons from self-organising traffic lights in city transport systems

The pattern in which cities have grown is predictable across the world, and it’s based on the economic relationship between the centre and the edge. There are some clues that this pattern is changing, driven by advanced information technology. But what may happen to the city if we develop regenerative activities by internalising energy and material flows? In this episode Michael Batty elaborates on the future developments of cities. Michael Batty is Bartlett Professor of Planning at University College London where he is Chair of the Centre of Advanced Spatial Analysis (ASA). Listen to the previous episodes of _A New Dynamic podcast series _

 

_This podcast series presented by Colin Webster explores the recently published book A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy. Each programme features an interview with authors of the book’s chapters. These leading experts on architecture, agriculture, design, business or engineering, provide unique insights that reflect on the necessity to develop a whole-system approach to re-think our economy. _ Order your copy of A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy

Cities as flows in a circular economy

In public discussion, the circular economy is often described as a way to allow technical products and their components to be used as endlessly as possible. But we can't forget about the biological cycle - how does it work when we come to the system that sustains life: agriculture? In this episode, Hunter Lovins argues that we need a 'circular economy of the soil' to feed a growing population, restore soil quality and ultimately reconcile farming systems with natural cycles. L. Hunter Lovins is President of Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS) and is co-author of Natural Capitalism: The Next Industrial Revolution. Listen to the previous episodes of _A New Dynamic podcast series _

 

_This podcast series presented by Colin Webster explores the recently published book A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy. Each programme features an interview with authors of the book’s chapters. These leading experts on architecture, agriculture, design, business or engineering, provide unique insights that reflect on the necessity to develop a whole-system approach to re-think our economy. _ Order your copy of A New Dynamic 2: Effective systems in a circular economy

Hunter Lovins on the circular economy of soil

What do we mean by low to middle income economies or emerging markets? Why has there been so little research on the circular economy opportunities in these contexts so far? How can economies dependent on intense resources extraction take advantage of a new regenerative model? Seb Read is joined by Luisa Santiago, CE100 Brazil Programme Lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, where she conducts circular economy business research initiatives in the Brazilian context. This episode accompanies the publication of articles from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Head of Innovation Ken Webster, which explores what the circular economy means for low to middle income countries. Read the article one here.

Circular economy in emerging markets: an insight from Brazil

What is it people really want: a car, with all the costs of ownership and maintenance, or mobility, the service that car actually provides?

A circular economy, characterised by a smarter use of materials, energy and information, will prioritise access over ownership of products.

 

These are called product service systems, or sometimes 'performance contracts', and they could mean that customers can ride the wave of constant innovation at a lower cost than outright ownership.

In this episode we're joined by three people in this space: Rich Gilbert of the Agency of Design, Natasha Franck, Founder of Eon the 'Netflix for fashion', and Gunnlaugur Erlendsson from Enso Tyres.

This podcast was recorded as part of the 2016 Disruptive Innovation Festival. Find out more at thinkdif.co.

Better products at better prices?

Better products at better prices?

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