Interview: Designing a Zero Waste Economy with Joe Illes from The Ellen MacArthur Foundation

“Identify and eliminate waste and pollution at source,  circulate products and materials at their highest value for as long as possible and regenerate natural systems. So, put back at least as much or more than you take out from the natural ecosystems on which we depend. And do all that by design.”

This podcast is no stranger to innovation that drives positive change. We’ve met people who are making electric transport easily accessible in Africa and those using VR  to enable medics to reach patients in disaster zones. But what if we could redesign the whole economy to make it waste-free and sustainable for the future?

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation was founded in 2010 by the sailor Ellen MacArthur, with the aim of driving forward a circular economy. Traditionally, we think of the economy as linear: we start with extracting raw materials, which we then make products, use those products for their lifespan, and then they are disposed of as waste. The circular economy takes a different approach, with all of the materials extracted and used designed to be recycled, re-used or fed back into the economy at different stages. This involves a different way of thinking at design stage

In this special episode of The Third Angle, Paul sits down in the studio to speak to Joe Illes, Circular Design Programme Lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. He tells us about the work he is doing to promote the circular economy, and talks about the main things designers should keep in mind when designing something truly sustainable.

Explore the rest of the episodes in the series, where we go on location to meet some of the companies helping to shape a better world.

Find out more about the Ellen MacArthur Foundation here.

Listen to our previous episodes here.

Your host is Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC.

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates.

This is an 18Sixty production for PTC. Executive producer is Jacqui Cook. Sound design and editing by Ollie Guillou. Location recording by Gareth Evans and Cal Clarke. Music by Rowan Bishop.

Transcript

Welcome to Third Angle, where we're going full circle and finding out how to design a waste-free future.

I'm your host, Paul Haimes from industrial software company PTC. In this podcast, you'll usually find us on a factory floor or in a cutting-edge lab. But in this special episode of the podcast, we're in the studio as we deep dive into the circular economy. Now, here at Third Angle, we love design that's creating a better world for tomorrow. We've been to visit the people who have used PTC technology to build electric motorcycles, design sustainable homes of tomorrow and bring electric mobility to communities in rural Africa. 

Now, not every product itself is inherently sustainable in its purpose. But almost every product has an impact on the environment through its manufacture. Now, when we traditionally think of design and manufacturing, we think of a linear process where raw materials are manufactured, then sold to a consumer who uses them for a while, and then they're eventually thrown away as waste. The circular economy gives us a new way of thinking about building and creating the products of tomorrow where, through thoughtful design, we're able to repair, reuse or recycle nearly all of the products that we make. And then, at the end of their normal use, products are designed to be broken down to re-enter the system to be used again. 

This isn't about minimising the negative impact of industry, but about completely flipping our way of thinking about industry itself so that it actually becomes sustainable, or has a positive net impact on the environment. Somebody who knows all about this new way of thinking is Joe Iles from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Joe is challenging the next generation of designers to think about the global economy in a completely different way. 

So firstly, hello, Joe, thank you for joining us today. Could you perhaps start by explaining the story behind the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, tell us about what you do, from let's say the education piece, but also to influencing stakeholders within industry?

Sure. Well, thanks for having me. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation was set up in 2010 by the round-the-world sailor Ellen MacArthur, one of the most successful solo sailors in history. During one of her last round-the-world record-breaking voyages, she started thinking about resources, because when you go around the world, you want to be really fast. And to be fast, you want to be light, so you take with you just what you need to make that voyage around the globe. And you manage that precisely, because if you run out of something you can't restock. 

When Ellen was in the Southern Ocean, the closest people to her boats were the people in the International Space Station above her head. So they're obviously not going to be very useful if she runs out of diesel for the generator, or food, or medical supplies, or something like that. So it really forced her to grapple with this idea of the notion of finite. And when she stepped back on dry land at the end, she started to ask, “Well, is our economy any different? How do we run our economy? We have stocks of materials, and we know that some of them are finite. So what are we going to do about it?” And the answer that she kept getting back from speaking to very intelligent people about this topic was, “It's going to be okay, we're going to use a bit less and recycle a bit more,” which was really unsatisfying for two main reasons. Firstly, does it really get us to a prosperous future? If we think of that as a straight line – take, make and waste for most of the materials and products we use – does that just not stretch the line a little bit further down the track, and we still hit the limits of that model maybe 10, 15, 20, 100 years into the future? So is it a model fit for the future? And then is the call to just use a bit less, do a bit less, is that really inspiring? Is that really a mission? Could we not aspire to have a huge impact on the world? To do more, but make it positive rather than just trying to minimise the bad stuff?

Could explain a little bit about your journey, and how you came to be part of the foundation? 

I finished university in 2010. And was pretty sad, actually. I don’t mean to get too morose, but I had gone to university to study history just because I loved it. I was interested in it. And between 2007 and 2008, obviously, the financial crash happened, and the mood when I graduated felt like one of just… well, it was austerity. It was cutbacks, and it was it was pretty dour. I was living at home on the Isle of Wight with my parents, pulling pints in the local pub – shout out to The Three Bishops – and then I heard of this charity, based on the Isle of Wight, that was doing something around resources, education, the economy, working with business. And I sort of trotted along and did some homework, and ended up being completely captivated by this idea. We'll get more into the concept, I guess, but when you learn, you notice, that the world around us is currently based on this invented pattern of take, make, waste, this linearity, once that veil has been lifted and you see that as a root cause for so many economic, social and environmental problems, then it is inspiring, I think. That's a real mission to do something about it.

We use the term circular economy. Could you perhaps give a perspective on what that means? And how is it different perhaps to the world that we're in today? 

So really, we find the easiest way to talk about the circular economy is to think of it as fundamentally different to our current linear economy. So today, we take materials out of the ground, we knock them around a bit, turn them into products that are used often for a short amount of time, and then are often disposed of. We often say that most of the materials we use, we lose, and often after just one short use cycle in that current linear economy. That model has worked, and still seems to be working for some businesses, and for most affluent people, because they can navigate their way to the stuff that makes them happy or safe or comfortable. And throughout history that model has lifted billions of people out of poverty, it's enabled us to have medicines, warm clothes, healthier food, a roof over our heads – not universally, unfortunately, but for many. But that model only really worked when you don't think about the environmental consequences of where we put stuff when we no longer want it and so on. So a circular economy is fundamentally different. And it's inspired by living systems that embrace complexity and where there's no waste. And it's really centred on three specific principles: eliminate waste and pollution. So identify and eliminate waste and pollution at source. Circulate products and materials at their highest value for as long as possible. And regenerate natural systems. So put back at least as much or more than you take out from the natural ecosystems on which we depend. And do all that by design. So by intention, at the start. This isn't about trying to just treat the symptoms of a broken linear economy and just tidy up, but by intention create products, services, materials and systems that are circular by design. 

It's a fascinating concept. And I know the butterfly diagram, which was, I believe, created within your foundation.

It was. I think the butterfly diagram was first drawn back in 2011 on a napkin, and it owes a lot to biomimicry, to regenerative design, to industrial ecology. And as you said, the circular economy is not a completely new idea. It was invented in 2010. But it synthesises and draws upon lots of other very important schools of thought.

The thing I find most interesting is on the right wing of the butterfly is the physical products that I think we can all relate to and we can all understand, that we want to keep products working for longer, and then make sure things go on to have another life after they have finished their first life. But on the left side, the left wing of the butterfly, this is all about the natural resources. And perhaps you could explain a little bit more about how that works to our listeners as well. 

Yes. So, as you say, on the right-hand side, we call them technical materials. Those are things like metals and polymers, and you'd be looking at a number of different routes or pathways there ranging from recycling – which, whilst it's a starting point for many should really be the last resort. And then really, we'd be looking at those inner loops of a circular economy through things like remanufacturing, refurbishing, repair, redistribution, reuse, maintenance and sharing. And as we get into those tighter loops, what we noticed is what we're talking about in layperson terms is, let's try and mess with products less. If you can keep selling in service without shipping around the world, or using 100 extra spare parts, or a week of labour to do it, then why not do that? Because that's how you preserve the embodied carbon, the embodied energy labour that went into making that product in the first place. The biological side, you're right, the butterfly diagram makes it look quite simple, actually, but it's hugely complex. But we're talking here about, in part, food and farming systems, and agricultural products. But there's more complexity which we've discovered about the famous butterfly diagram over the years, which we grapple with, which is products like, what about a wooden house? That's a biological material that then you would want to keep in use and maintain the repair over time. So there is a bit more complexity to it, but with biological materials, really, what we want to be doing is ensuring that when we take them and harvest them or process them, we're not then adding something that means that they can't return to the soil or the ecosystem from where they came. And that's something that I think gets missed. I think sometimes people think, “Well, that cotton has been grown,” or, “That meat came from an animal, so it can just go back in, right?” And it's not quite that simple. We need to be very conscious that we have added dyes or chemicals to those natural materials, they may not be able to return to that system, and they may impact the ability for that system to be truly regenerative. So obviously, crops are grown now, which is a good thing, but the way that we grow them, we need huge amounts of fertiliser and pesticides to keep that profitable and soil health is massively degraded. So actually, even though it might seem rosy, because these are natural products and natural materials, a huge amount of thinking and effort needs to go into making that regenerative rather than equally as degrading as a copper mine or something like that. 

If I can turn to the technical side of the butterfly diagram, and just start perhaps at the beginning, where we are developing a product. Many of our listeners are technical people, they're innovators. Can you explain a little bit about the principles of the circular economy when you start actually on that journey of bringing a product to market? What are the principles that we're trying to get across and trying to adopt at that point in time?

At the stage of designing anything, the designers I work with, and the way we try and inspire that community is that the decisions that are made at the design stage influence how we make and use things. And once those decisions have been made, they're really hard to reverse. So I always think of something like ocean plastic. Unfortunately, the more I read about it, the more it seems unimaginable that we could ever extract all the plastic that's reached the ocean already. These are challenges at different scales, admittedly, but it's completely feasible to imagine a packaging model, business model, that never leaks plastic into the ocean. So that's why it sounds sort of obvious, and I'm sure it will be obvious to many of your listeners, but that's why design is so important. In terms of the actual principles, one thing we try and do is to avoid getting stuck racing straight to certain strategies. So with the circular economy, often you hear about repair or remanufacturing, or renting a product rather than selling it, or recycling, or smarter materials choices. Those all might be the answer, but the method that you might apply for a bicycle that's designed for shared use versus a piece of packaging for some crisps, or a house, they're obviously going to be different strategies. We produced a report earlier this year called From ambition to action: an adaptive strategy for circular design. We tried to lay out six areas, six design skills that practitioners can use to lay the groundwork for truly impactful circular economy innovation. These were: understand the system, set your vision, build capability, create space for collaboration, use tools, and set and respond to rules. And I can go into more detail on some of those, but really what we aim to do there is to say, “This is how you really unlock the power of the design team.” Because designers are doing all those things at different levels already. And the designers that we speak to, they want to use their skills to a more strategic level to support the shift to a circular economy rather than just saying, “Here's this product, can we make it with 50% recycled material rather than 10?” So we think what designers can do goes a bit deeper than just tweaking the materials or making something a bit repairable or something like that. 

We see a lot of our customers looking at a holistic way of embedding better circularity practice at that design stage. It may be that they're trying to lightweight the product, it may be that they're making fewer prototypes, or using simulation, so they know the product is going to work when it gets out there, and they know it's going to be suitable for the lifespan that was intended. And so I think there's a lot of that, together with the material choices and manufacturing processes, that our customers are already doing, understanding the carbon debt associated with the supply chain, all of those things, I think, from our side as well as really important from a capability perspective. You mentioned tools, Joe, and that really is the bit where we fit, I think, and where our tools impact – and we have a responsibility to deliver those tools to our customers.

Well, let's think about lightweighting for a second, because that's a really interesting example. I forget the exact percentages here, and the dates – I'm not actually a very good historian – but I think from roughly 1970 to today, the average washing-up liquid bottle had something like a 50-60% reduction in weight. Through very smart material science, engineering, maybe some additives to the plastic, which meant it could still perform its tasks in durability and waterproofing, for example, but with using less material. Which sounds like a good thing. But the potential impact of that over time is that each unit of packaging is worth less than before, which means that the economics of recycling become a bit skewed, actually. So these are the things that we do sort of encourage designers, and the organisations of which they are a part, to watch out for. So if someone is using tools, and a certain tool that's helping them reach some very specific goal around lightweighting or something like that, we'd also say, “Well, look at that in the context of that vision and understand the system,” because it would be unhelpful to proceed down a particular innovation pathway and then realise, “Ah, we're sort of stuck now because we've had so many unintended consequences which we never imagined.” So that's why that sort of systemic understanding, that vision-setting piece, is also really important.

When we look at the circular economy model, there are a number of what appear to be counterintuitive approaches. One of them, you touched on it earlier, was this idea that we want to keep the product working longer, we want to keep it going, keep it maintained, make sure that it's out there, so that the energy and the embedded carbon that was used during the creation of the product that stays in the market longer. Now, that might appear counterintuitive, but we see a lot of companies today moving from selling the product to selling the product as a service. And if you can sell the product as a service, and then you're able to keep that running longer, it's good for you as a manufacturer, good for the customer, and obviously, it's all part of that circular economy model as well.

Exactly. That paying for performance, not just the product itself. It also shifts the incentives for making a durable product towards the manufacturer, because if I'm making printers, and I could get that item back 10 or 20 times and effectively sell it to 10 or 20 different customers with mostly the same materials, that seems like a good idea. In fact, in some of our earlier reports, we did the numbers for things like washing machines and commercial vehicles and it stacks up pretty well. So that's absolutely part of it, that business model shift.

And I think you've touched on the printer manufacturers. We've got a very interesting customer down in Spain who makes 3D printers, but they embed all of that circularity information right at the design stage, and that lives with the product during its life. So when that printer, parts of that printer, subassemblies and so forth, reach the end of that life, they can easily access, “This piece needs to go back because it's going to be remanufactured. This piece is recycled. This piece, unfortunately, you know, there's no real reuse for it.” But everything is stamped and labelled. This is an area that will develop, partly because of regulation. And I think with the EU's move for the digital product passport, I think that's a really important step in the right direction. Could you maybe explain a little bit about that, Joe, in terms of what that means and what it's intended to do?

My understanding of the digital product passport is that it's a method to provide data for products – I believe the categories haven't been totally pinned down yet, or the priority order of the different categories of products. That data is then stored in the cloud, and is accessed through something like a QR code for different stakeholders along the supply chain. So it could be end of life, or repair, or something like that. And this is not a completely new topic. At policy level, it's gaining traction, which is fantastic. But one of the first case studies that I wrote when joining the Ellen MacArthur Foundation was for a ship, the Maersk Triple E liner, which is a gargantuan cargo ship. And the ambition there was they were saying, “Well, there's a problem currently, a big boat like that would usually have a lifespan of about 20 years. There's seven different grades of steel on that vessel. But at the end of life, it goes to a beach somewhere and it gets broken up. But they lose track of those different grades of steel so it all gets merged into one pretty low-grade steel which is not worth that much. So the product passport, even for an item of that size, we’ll aim to say, “Well, if at the end of life, we could at least say ‘here is the high-grade steel, here's the low-grade steel and everything in between’ then we could keep that material in use at the same level of performance.” These ideas are not altogether new, and it’s an interesting observation that technological innovation often outpaces systems innovation. So most of the technology that we need to build elements of the circular economy into our world today that exists, but the system is certainly under-developed. And actually, the lock-ins of today's linear system, or the incentives that mean it's harder to break from that take, make, waste model than to stick with it, that means that progress on some of these things is 20 or 30 years in the making. 

And that is where regulatory bodies and governments absolutely have a role to play in driving this and forcing the hand of industry. Because all of this makes sense. And like you said, it's a big shift, it's highly disruptive, and therefore, companies will get there, but it's how quickly they'll get there. And we really need to drive that agenda. 

I think that's definitely true. And policymakers can absolutely align incentives, level playing fields, they can also pull customers to new behaviours, or ensure that products with a circular potential reach that potential – whether that's France’s repair indicators that they now have for some products, or I think in Austria they'll give almost like a mini-grant for people who want to repair a product rather than chucking it out. But we should also think that smartphones changed everything, but they weren't forced by regulation; regulation enabled some of the technology, like GPS and things like that. But a lot of those innovations are a product of technological developments and really good marketing. One thing that we need to factor into this transformation into a circular economy is we need to think about how to make it really appealing. How we present it as a desirable life. The idea of owning a car, a house, and a dog or whatever, there have been times when marketing people have created a vision of what a prosperous, happy life looks like. And there's a huge opportunity now to shape that around a different set of needs – those that are that are connected to the circular economy.

That leads us into another area, which is this notion of reverse logistics and how we actually get products that are at the end of their life, how we get them back to do things with them. It's a tricky challenge. We're very good at shipping products, but we've now got to bring things back so that the right handling and behaviour can happen at the end of life. 

Well, you made me think of one of my early trips with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to a car manufacturer. And we went round the factory floor for the new cars for a couple of hours, and it was mind-blowing. Hugely automated, clean and shiny, and hundreds of parts and cars rolling off the production line every day. And then we left and they said, “Would you like to see our remanufacturing facility?” And we went around the corner and there was sort of a shed with two blokes hitting a car with a hammer, basically. That was a decade ago, and I'm sure that facility has moved on since, but it did make me realise that this is what we're up against. As you said, the outward flow of stuff is hugely efficient and optimised. And we've had decades of practice to get that working, by some measure, really, really well. The reverse cycle for so many types of product is a cottage industry in comparison, or it has been. So that needs huge amounts of thinking and investment to make that as sophisticated as the outward cycle so that it can compete. And again, that comes back to design. The smartphone is quite symbolic for this. Yes, we can repair them, but it's not necessarily easy, because they've been designed using adhesive and proprietary screws, and maybe the technology, the software gets a bit screwed when you take it apart or something like that. So I can understand why for the past few years OEMs have not really wanted to do that. “Why would we want to get our stuff back? Think about how many people we would have to employ to repair all that.” But if you by intention designed that because you knew that you were going to get those items back, or you were renting it so the business depended on you be able to keep that sort of core, as you said with the automotive parts, in service for longer, then you would make different design decisions.

It all goes back to the business model and that vision that a company has, and we've got customers that are really at the forefront of their carbon debt reduction, zero waste by 2050. And those are all really fantastic targets to have. And a lot of companies are working really hard.

Caterpillar are famous for it. I spoke to someone from Caterpillar, again many years ago, at a remanufacturing summit. And I was surprised at the size of the deposit they put on the engines for these industrial engines. It was almost 50% of the cost, I think. I don't know if that is true now, but it was so big because they wanted to ensure that every single one of those was returned to them.

We've touched on some really interesting topics there around the beginning of life of a product, the middle of life, keeping it running, and then obviously the end of life and what happens to it. Can we just touch a little bit on the education that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is doing in terms of how you go out to industry, out to schools, out to universities, and teach them about these principles?

We take quite a broad view of learning and where that happens, and with whom. We do some work with schools, we work with a number of universities, and we have since the start – universities like Cranfield and many more. And a lot of our effort is on inspiring and building capabilities within businesses. So we have a network of around 200 businesses, both large and small, that we work with. We host events for them where we bring them all together, we encourage them to network and to collaboratively problem-solve – they form projects between like-minded companies or companies with shared challenges – and we produce a range of educational materials, whether those are courses that they can do, assets they can download, and things like that. We also extend our view of learning to digital marketing and social media. We think you start learning if you read a tweet that says what the three principles of a circular economy are. So we really try and guide people through different layers of understanding. We know that not everyone on the planet needs to understand deeply what a circular economy is, with all its systemic implications and complexity. But we do think that it's a really compelling idea. People sometimes say, “The economy is not going to be a circle. It's not that simple.” Of course, it's not that simple – there's unimaginable complexity. But the idea of a circle is so simple and universal, something without a beginning and an end, that anyone can really get it. So, to that end, we have produced a huge number of podcasts. We've been producing something called The Circular Economy show, which is a live magazine-format show from our office on the Isle of Wight. So it's a really broad range of materials, from insights and reports through to really digestible story-driven stuff, through to workshops and more hands-on activities.

If we think about perhaps some final messages for our listeners, many of whom are design practitioners, their industrial designers, engineers, and innovators, what would be your final message to them, Joe, in terms of what you'd like them to take away from today's conversation?

My final message would be to look at what they're working on right now. Or the last thing that they designed or were involved in designing, and just ask: what happens next? And keep asking that until you think you've illuminated as much of the system around that thing as you can to the limits of your awareness or understanding. And the reason I say that is that I think the real superpower for the circular economy is understanding systems, or scrutinising the world around us and asking what's the system in which they sit. And understanding that will lead you to the right sort of answers, or maybe even asking better questions. So I'd encourage people to ask, “What next?” Where did the materials come from? Where are they going to end up? Who's going to use this after the first person is finished with it? Will it be repaired? How will it be repaired? Will it end up in this country or another country? Will the cap of this bottle end up somewhere different from the bottle itself? Keep asking that question and I think people will be surprised at how many follow-on questions, how much information they can build, around something as simple as a plastic bottle, a pair of jeans or a ham sandwich. So asking questions, and especially that question of what happens next, I think is something that everyone can do and is the best starting point. 

And as you say, it starts with the vision, doesn't it? It starts with that ethos that you need to adopt and embed in all of your thinking. And I think that is a great message to perhaps sign off with. So Joe, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a fascinating conversation. Really insightful, in terms of the practices that we need to be thinking about and adopting to really drive this forward.

Brilliant, thanks for having me.