SEE THE SHOW NOTES AND LISTEN AT: How to Move from "Take, Make, Waste" to Circular Business Models and Supply Chains

Katie Whalen [00:00:00] Getting in the Loop. Episode 8 How to Move from Take Make Waste to Circular Business Models and Supply Chains with Catherine Weetman.

[00:00:11] Hi, I'm Katie Whalen and join me each week as I talk with experts around the globe about circular economy. You'll find out what's being done to make it a reality and if it can really solve the problems it promises. It's time for Getting in the Loop.

[00:00:33] Welcome back to the Getting in the Loop podcast. Today is Earth Day. And to celebrate, we have a special giveaway. Our guest today is Catherine Weetman. And one of the topics on today's episode is her book, A Circular Economy Handbook for Business and Supply Chains. Catherine has graciously given me a copy to give away to one lucky listener. So keep listening until the end of the episode or head over to gettinginthelooppodcast.com to find out how to win. And don't worry, if you think it's kind of counter-intuitive to have a giveaway on Earth Day, you can choose to have the electronic version of your book. Okay, so now on to today's podcast.

[00:01:13] Today on the show, we're speaking with Catherine Weetman, who is the director of Rethink Solutions, a circular economy focused business consultancy based in the UK. Catherine has over 25 years experience in contract logistics, manufacturing, retail and supply chain consultancy. And she has worked with many firms, including Tesco catalogs and DHL supply chain. In this episode, Catherine and I talk about her book, Circular Economy Handbook for Business and Supply Chains and what she has learned from working with SMEs to implement Circular economy. We also address the power of the crowd and hear about her upcoming plans to provide additional resources through her consultancy.

[00:01:55] So thank you so much for coming on the podcast, and I'm really excited to talk to you today, Catherine.

Catherine Weetman [00:02:01] It's great. I'm really pleased to be here. Katie.

Katie Whalen [00:02:04] Thank you. And I know you're doing a lot in terms of circular economy and you have your own consulting firm, Rethink Solutions. And could you tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing regarding implementing Circular economy within companies?

Catherine Weetman [00:02:23] Sure. I'm trying to help mainly small or medium businesses and startups entrepreneurs because I feel a lot of the consultancies and think tanks and so on are aiming at big global businesses and in doing the research for my book. Most of the examples I found were from startups and small businesses. So that's what I'm trying to do is spread the word. I think they'll they're more agile and more open to looking at new opportunities anyway. So what I'm trying to do is help them understand what the circular economy is all about, that it goes a lot further than resource efficiency and a bit more recycling. And inspire them with lots of lots of examples to help spark ideas for their business and then give them a toolkit to help them get started. So so we do workshops, we do coaching and mentoring to research into specific sectors to give people a few more ideas. You know, point people towards other useful resources or that kind of thing.

Katie Whalen [00:03:35] Wow. So you have been doing like these workshops. Can you tell me a little bit more about how these workshops usually run? Are they multiple people from different companies or is it going to just, you know, one company and doing a workshop with them?

Catherine Weetman [00:03:52] We can do either. Most of the ones, though, are mixed groups. So either sector specific or a kind of local business organization in the U.K. that might be Chambers of Commerce or Federation of Small Businesses, something like that, where lots of small businesses are interested in something.

[00:04:14] So normally it's a couple of hours more if we more if we can manage it, giving people a quick overview of the circular economy and then using the frameworks. From that I developed for my book, which. Now I'm starting to call it the building blocks of the Circular economy.

[00:04:32] So thinking about the inputs or the materials that you're going to use, thinking about how to design the product to make it more durable or shareable to be repairable and easy to recover the materials. Thinking about process design, how can you recover all the inputs and have this waste is food approach? And then how could you recover your own product's components and materials at the end of the cycle? And around of all of that sets the business model. So we kind of go through each of those building blocks and give them some examples that are either relevant to their sector or a kind of from a range of sectors. So the idea is to, you know, give a wide range of quick examples so that people start see just how much is going on. So we. So we do that sometimes we might do a product tear down as well on an existing product, getting them sink in much more detail about what's gone into that product and then. They start to redesign. So here they're either redesigning the product that we've given them or redesigning something fairly straightforward. We try and encourage people not to do a smartphone or a laptop, much as everybody wants to redesign them to be better. But it starts to get too technical quite quickly.

[00:05:51] So they redesign and then we we help them think about what they might do within their own business as a as a kind of take away on and start for action.

Katie Whalen [00:06:04] And I'm curious, because you've been working in supply chains and logistics for over 25 years now and you've been in this area of sustainability and circular economy, have you noticed, especially maybe in the last couple of years, a difference or a change in the uptake of circular economy or interest in and in really diving into this topic?

Catherine Weetman [00:06:28] Definitely. Certainly amongst bigger businesses, it's starting to become, you know, a generally used term, though, I still worry that a lot of people see it as just reserves, resource efficiency or a bit more recycling, or they take a kind of a view that you have to completely close the loop, which can seem overwhelming and too difficult to do so people sort of thing. Well, it's a great idea, but it all seems too difficult. So I'll, you know, park it for now.

[00:07:00] But in with SMEs, I still think it's not so well known. And certainly in people that I meet in everyday conversation, it's it's a term that people haven't heard of as soon as you explain it. You know, people get it and think it's a great idea. So that's the challenge of getting used to, get out there. I have noticed on the BBC, another kind of mainstream media that people are starting to use the term now circular economy to describe recovery of products and so on, as opposed to just saying more sustainable or less waste or whatever. So it is starting to become a recognized term.

Katie Whalen [00:07:43] Exactly. But I also liked what you mentioned in terms of the fact that sometimes if they're thinking, oh, it's only just recycling or closing the loop. And yeah, if you had that mentality then especially about it, you have to close the entire loop, then it can be overwhelming about where where to, where to start.

Catherine Weetman [00:08:04] Yeah. And that's why I like to use and I thought long and hard for my book about what kind of framework I was going to use. You know, I didn't want to use somebody else's framework because that would feel like plagiarizing. And it kind of dawned on me that with all the experience I've had in retail and manufacturing and so on.

[00:08:27] But if you just start somewhere, it's easier to get going and that actually if you break the circular economy down into those five building blocks, you can start with any one of those. And that might be the only thing you ever do. You know, you just going a little bit more circular. Hopefully people will get inspired by the benefits of the first thing that they do and move on to the next thing and the next thing and eventually end up closing the loop. But you can start with any of those five things and use that to help engage all the people in the business who might be more skeptical. So it's a it's a lower risk approach, which I think works really well with particularly existing businesses who don't want to take too many big risks. Especially the old ones.

Katie Whalen [00:09:15] Exactly. So we've sort of been we've been talking about the book, but maybe maybe less. Well, let's dive into sort of what is the book and why did you write it? So I had a chance to to read it. And I think it's really, really a nice piece of work. And the organization is very clear and it is a practical handbook for people who want to, you know, see how they could actually apply different circular business models and different like what would that. How does this change the supply chain? But just to to to tell the listeners who may not have had a chance yet to to read the book, tell us why you wrote it and what it's about.

Catherine Weetman [00:09:57] Okay. So back in 2015, I think it was. I was already focusing most of my work on the Circular economy. So I think I started out with looking at anything that would help move sustainability forward quite quickly, realized that the Circular economy was probably the biggest lever and it was the one that had most advantages for business. So. So that's why I started to focus on it. And I had a phone call out of the blue from a UK publisher, Kogan Page. Who said somebody suggested somebody I knew had suggested I could I'd be a good person to write a book on waste in the supply chain and say this was kind of, well, I'd never thought of writing a book before. And I'm sort of thinking about it. Well, I probably could write a book about waste in the supply chain and how you could eliminate it, but doesn't sound very exciting. And you know how many people are going to buy a book on that? But broadening it out to think about the circular economy and the waste is food concept and, you know, removing waste. Does that started to feel more appealing? And so I propose that's the publisher. They not really heard of the Circular economy back then. So I kind of explained a bit about it and they thought it was a really good idea. And so then there was the fear factor of, you know, wow, this feels like a big a big, big project, you know, why am I up to this? But it sort of felt like one of those. Well, if you you know, if you don't try, you'll never know. So I'd already read a few a few books from the Ella MacArthur Foundation and Cradle to Cradle and books like that. And I felt that a lot of them were focusing on the cult, the concepts and the big principles and also focusing on the benefits for regions and kind of, you know, the whole of a sector and focusing less on what it would mean for an individual business and specifically how to get started. And once I had begun to think about, you know, the supply chain and what happens at each stage of the supply chain. And of course, product design is a, you know, a major influence on what materials you need. How are you going to make it all the rest of it? So it then became this kind of design and supply chain, which was the start of what what I'm now calling the building blocks. But it was kind of breaking it down into the various stages of the business and thinking about what you would do differently at each of those stages. So it's trying to do it really from the bottom up instead of top down. I wanted to give people lots and lots of examples. So to both try and spark ideas and also to demonstrate just how much was already happening. So. So I was keen to kind of, you know, not include long case studies, but just quick snapshots to kind of show just what's a massive range of sectors and geographies and different innovations were already happening. And I realized as I started to write the book that it was going to have to be about the circular economy. From a business perspective, you can't start with a supply chain if you don't give people the context, though, by the time I'd written it. You know, the business context became about half the book. Well, over half the book to give you the background on how it impacted on the business model. Making the business case and so on. And then about a third of the book was about supply chain. What happened to each stage of supply chain and what the circular economy what difference it would make to the rest of your supply chain and how how you'd need to do things differently and then the last section on how to get started.

Katie Whalen [00:14:03] I think is a very clever organization. And also, I really liked how you sort of separated the supply chain into like the upstream, midstream and downstream. So it's sort of allowing companies and industry people to sort of identify themselves where where they are. So, again, not looking at the entire how we're going to close this entire loop. But, you know, what can I do considering sort of the constraints that the operating space that I'm in right now?

Catherine Weetman [00:14:33] Yeah. And also thinking about for me, thinking about how supply chains within business are organized from a functional perspective. You may have a you may in a big company have. Somebody at board level, as you know, chief supply chain officer. But underneath that, you'll have a procurement team. You might have a manufacturing team. And then you'd have a digital distribution team and they would be completely separate teams. So I was trying to segment it so that, you know, each team could get straight into the meat of what it meant to them rather than just putting everything together and people having to dig around to find out, you know, what what it means for them. And I think as I've as I've done some work afterwards, the little bits of work with the United Nations operations team here and ops and realizing that procurement could be a massive. Lever within a company for Circular economy. Even if you didn't change anything about the products that you make or the services that you sell, even if you just started by procuring things in a more circular way, that would help to. Get you into circular thinking and also start to crystallize benefits. As well as spreading the word with all your suppliers. So I think, you know, for a place to get started, procurement is a really big lever. Yeah.

Katie Whalen [00:16:04] Yeah, definitely. Definitely. We see- I've seen a lot of action, especially from the past work that I was doing in the Dutch. Well, in the Dutch government and in the Netherlands. And there was so much discussion about procurement, procurement and having a focus there. And also now in Sweden, where I am again, have this this talking about the importance of procurement and also public procurement being able to influence what's happening as well. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was also thinking about your book and when I was looking at it, you addressed different types of circular business models and then you go in depth in different sectors such as food, industrial, manufacturing and fashion. Now that you've been doing, you know, now that you've written the book and have been actively working in this in these different sectors. Is there particular sector that you find promising an implementation of Circular economy?

Catherine Weetman [00:17:10] I guess they're all promising. I think food is probably the most the most difficult, you know, because you're not going to get anything back to make it to human food again at the end. You know, a bit of down cycling. But it still has lots of potential in terms of using circular economy and different and similar approaches to reduced waste. Consumer tech I think of it as an industrial. Those are the easiest sectors to change, I think, because it's no longer lasting products. And I think there is already starting to be a little a little bit of a movement towards wanting things that are repairable and more durable. And we know that, you know, in in the past, washing machines, TV's, all that kind of stuff, you know, lasted for decades. And now, you know, we think we've done well if it lasts for five years. So that doesn't really see much of a progression, does it? But there are there are campaigns for kind of, you know, right to repair. So that would avoid the case of the quite expensive washing machine that I bought. And about four years later, it needed a new bearing. And I was, you know, having them done all my mountain bike mechanic stuff myself in the past. I know that bearings cost, cost nothing and are easy to fit. But I wasn't able to buy a bearing. I had to buy the entire drum unit. So that's that seemed to be the manufacturer getting round its obligations under the EU rules that they have to provide parts for 10 years after the model ceases to exist. But if they make the part you know so expensive that it is pointless buying it, then they kind of, you know, persuade you to buy the new one instead. But I think what manufacturers are missing is that you're unlikely to be persuaded to buy a new. Replacement item of the same brand. You know, I've high was more, yes, but I was never going to buy that brand again. I think that's a missing hidden cost of this planned obsolescence level. And I think my lecture was. I've lost sight of that. And instead, it's spending millions on marketing to persuade more people to buy their product instead of making a product that people think is great and will be loyal to in the future and tell all our friends to buy this brand of washing machine because, you know, you can get the parts and you get bearing and it only cost 10 pounds and your local repair man can swap it in 50 minutes.

Katie Whalen [00:19:58] Yeah, exactly. So in this way, do you think Circular economy sort of challenging the status quo of how or is it maybe you just like going back to how we used to used to do do things like how do you see that happening?

Catherine Weetman [00:20:16] I think it's a bit of both. And I think- It's you know, it's- we did used to do things this that way because we things we want more, more expensive and we all had a mentality of of, you know, things being repairable. And I think it's just that we've been, you know, if he can take either view car, you can either say that consumers demand or you can say that, you know, Brands encourages manipulators even into thinking that we need the latest new bit of kitten. You know, that's a washing machine with electronic gizmos that is going to be much better than the one that you've got. So we seem to have been persuaded that, you know, it's normal to replace things. And I think people are starting to realize that that's that's not necessarily good. What would be really helpful is if the consumer advice organizations in the U.K., we have one called, which. So they do. Tests, so they'll tell you how well something performs, how energy efficient it is, you know, how good it is at actually cleaning your clothes in the case of the washing machine and so on. But what they don't do is give you any information on how long you can expect that model to last or what the full life costs are. So if it's going to last on average five years and you pay whatever for it and it's this much energy, then what does it actually cost you? And those things wouldn't be so difficult to do and to maintain databases over time. And that would give consumers really powerful information and open people's eyes as to whether you're actually getting good value for money when you buy something.

Katie Whalen [00:21:59] That's a that's a really interesting idea to provide additional information to the consumer for them to make more informed decisions. So if I'm hearing you correctly, then you think that the policy has an important role to play in shaping that these sort of shifts in terms of how we think and how we buy and what how we purchase things, that it's policy that plays an important role as well.

Catherine Weetman [00:22:34] Definitely. Though I think policy has to be led and kickstarted, if you like, by us as citizens, you know, if we think of ourselves as citizens as well as consumers by giving government permission and encouraging government by making a noise and even encouraging the businesses by maybe, you know, using social media to say brand X, I really like your whatever product. But I wish you'd, you know, use more sustainable materials or I wish should make it repairable or whatever. And making that public, those kind of campaigns seem to be increasingly effective, particularly around plastics, where they've been campaigns, you know, for one company like the Wall Walkers, Crisps one I think we talked about last time we chatted. And that can really mobilize things and start to persuade both companies and governments that consumers are really open to this. And, you know, and and want some tools to help us make more informed decisions. And I think that's that's what's going to create that the tipping point, because then it's hard for manufacturers to lobby governments and push back. But, you know, this isn't really necessary. You know, we're we're we're getting there on our own. You don't need to legislate. If consumers are really, you know, protesting about lack of repair ability or lack of durability or whatever the problem is.

Katie Whalen [00:24:06] Maybe for our listeners could you briefly explain the Walker's Crisp example? Because-

Catherine Weetman [00:24:15] Sure.

Katie Whalen [00:24:16] Yeah. We talked about it earlier, but I think it's a fascinating story, so.

Catherine Weetman [00:24:21] Yeah, I was really interested in it, and there have been a few campaigns in the UK trying to encourage manufacturers to use more sustainable plastic, so make sure that recyclable and so on. And Walkers Crisps, which is owned by PepsiCo, had a laminate Chris packet. So it wasn't recyclable, it's full. And somebody started the campaign on one of the online apps. And I think quite quickly that, you know, a hundred thousand people signed up under them asking workers to commit to a more sustainable, recyclable Chris Bucket. So after a while, workers came back and said, oh, yes, you know, we'll do this. But by 2025, the people who'd signed didn't think that was good enough. So the campaign kept going and walkers weren't giving in. And then somebody found that there was a free post address for workers, customer service, and somebody, you know, put put the information on social media with a suggestion that people could just send their empty Chris packets back to walk in and the free post system. So this then made national news on the front pages of a few newspapers. And them, you know, there was a bit of backpedaling from workers and within a week or two, they'd organised a recycling system with TerraCycle. So now you're able to sign Chris packets back and TerraCycle will convert them into pub benches or whatever. But I just kept thinking that if walkers had reacted sooner, they'd have had a lot more negotiating power and options open to them and not look so bad in the national media. Yeah, but I think, you know, it's great because it was it it was public enough to get lots of other companies thinking about whether their packaging is easily recyclable.

[00:26:09] And even if it you know, even if something is recyclable, you have to think about where it's going to be consumed and where the waste is going to be created. So, you know, if you're only recycling routers, say, through the specialist waste departments of your local council, and this is something that you're going to eat at work or in the, you know, in the park or something like that. And, you know, there it's been it's just a mixed waste bin. That's where it's going to end up, isn't it? Very few people are going to take it all the way home. So and then save it up till the next time they go to the recycling site. So it's critical to think about where is this going to be used and how can I make it easy to get into the right disposal route?

Katie Whalen [00:26:53] Exactly. Yeah, I so- and I think you've run up really, really two opposing yet complementary perspectives. First, the first is like the power of the crowd and also the power of sort of a top down approach in terms of, you know, telling telling industry and what we what we what we'd like. Is it from a from a from a consumer point of view and also from a legislative point of view, but also the power of companies to actually implement solutions and to take step by step approaches and really think through design process of the use case and things like that. So, yeah, I think that these are you've hit the nail on the head on how we can think about this in terms of many different aspects.

Catherine Weetman [00:27:41] Yeah, I think I think these kind of things, you know, whilst it probably wasn't great to be at work, is when all this was going on would be on the back foot trying to think, what can we do? Yeah. The fact that it was so public in the UK probably got an awful lot of other companies thinking about how sustainable their packaging was and what happened if they were the next company to feature in one of these campaigns. So to kind of, you know, start people thinking and and raise consciousness right across business on consumers, I think is a really powerful thing. And I'm seeing this more or more with all sorts of things, you know, palm oil and other deforestation, ocean plastics, you know, all sorts of areas. People are starting to get engaged on social media. It is a brilliant way of spreading the word and getting our views out there into the open.

Katie Whalen [00:28:33] Exactly. You said that this doesn't really have anything to do with a circular economy, but it makes me think about the power of social media as well. And in terms of the fire festival. I don't know if you heard about that. It happened late last year. And that was basically they just created this this music festival on an island in the Caribbean and they created it purely just from social media, having all these influencers make make a lot of noise about it. And then when it came time to actually have the festival, they had thousands of people who had bought tickets and they didn't they didn't have what they had promised because it had been so much focus on just the social media of it. So that's not a good example. You need to have both, you know, the the awareness and then also, you know, substance behind it. But this was, you know, just the power of something that can just go viral. And in the end, it was actually social media that had just that destroyed them because they had people on this island showing just the whole horrible situation of like tents falling apart and things like that and the fact that there wasn't actually a music festival. So they built this whole idea up by social media. And in the end, it was social media that then sort of just built the entire made the entire idea just crumble. And they lost a lot of face and money on that. So, yeah, I think it starts with awareness and getting people engaged. And you can do you can achieve it a lot. If there is this, you know, strong demand from from social media.

Catherine Weetman [00:30:11] Yeah, I think you're right. It has to be you know, people have to mean what they say. So if you were going to campaign on social media and suggest people, you know, tweet this company to say that you're not gonna buy the product anymore, people who are people who are tweeting that have to mean it, don't they? Otherwise, the company sort of sees that there's half a million people of tweets, but sales have not declined one iota. So, you know, whatever you say you've got, you've got to follow through on somebody.

Katie Whalen [00:30:42] Exactly. Yeah, that's that's it. And you should have a good reason for doing it in the first place. So, Catherine, we've heard about your book, A Circular Economy Handbook for Business and Supply Chains. And you've told us about these workshops that you've been hosting with companies in the UK. And I'm curious, will you be continuing to do these workshops in the coming months this year, or will you be taking some new projects on?

Catherine Weetman [00:31:14] Yes. So we're gonna continue with the workshops. And also try and build some online easy access tools for small or medium businesses and entrepreneurs.

[00:31:27] I've been to a few events where, you know, people are saying how excited they are about the circular economy, but they know that their teams and their, you know, their kind of peers in business that people they know just don't have the time to take out the business even for a half day. Workshop is a big stretch for a company. And a half day workshop is only really enough to kind of give you a sense of the circular economy possibilities. So I'm creating a set of possibilities, modules, if you like. That would be would have free and easy to understand tools to help you. First of all, understand the Circular economy Circular economy. Secondly, to generate some ideas for your business. Third, to help you make the business case to take back to colleagues, because you may have some people who are skeptical and think it's in there. Everything is going to cost money and sustainability is a hash of the rest of it.

[00:32:29] So help you make the business case. And then the last module would be how do you get started, you know, help you with project planning. So that will all be on on a website with free to use kind of templates to guide you through things and then some. For those who need a bit more information, we'll have a subscription option with some kind of low cost additional support materials. And we'll we're hoping to run some online workshops. We might do kind of email courses on a lot of companies. Do those sort of 10 days of e-mail with Top Tips to help you get get planning and get thinking about it in a structured way and then build that into sort of online. Short course that you can do in your own time. Each day, maybe over 10 days. And here's here's a challenge with some online discussion with your peers and so on that you can participate in or not. So trying to create a variety of ways for people at different levels of starting knowledge, but all of them with actionable outcomes that people can take straight back into their business and get thinking about how to transition to circular economy and, you know, work all the benefits into into their businesses. And the other thing I'm trying to do is, is a podcast just like you've started. So I've. I enjoy listening to a variety of podcasts and I think it's a really good way to listen to a wide range of different ideas and people at different levels of the journey and so on with different motivations. And, you know, probably every other podcast I listen to. As soon as I get out of the car, having listened, I'm scribbling notes of, you know, must read this or must look at this website. So I think it's you know, it's a great way of kind of increasing all those ideas, sparking inputs that you can soak up every week.

Katie Whalen [00:34:34] And I will will have the link to this to your podcast on the show notes website for this episode so everyone who is listening can, of course, go ahead and check it out. And I'm definitely looking forward to it when you release the first episode. So and I also think it's really nice what you're doing in terms of the tools that you are going to be having on your website and the different resources because you have gained and you have a lot of extensive knowledge in this area. So I think it's great that you can share it with people and they can have sort of this plug and play solution to take back and be able to implement and spread within their own institutions and organizations. So good luck with continuing to develop those and get that on line in the coming year.

Catherine Weetman [00:35:33] Yeah, thanks, Katie. I just need another, you know, seven days in every week and I'll be happy.

Katie Whalen [00:35:41]  Exactly. Exactly. That's. I have that same feeling. So it's about that time of  the end of the episode where we wrap up, many listeners by now probably are aware of the format. So at the end of the episode, I ask the guest what in the loop event car that they would like to create. And for those who haven't played in the loop yet, essentially the event cards are part of the of the game where they influence what's happening on the market in terms of material demands. And they also influence players of accessibility to materials and also their ability to just make products and produce products in general. So, Catherine, what kind of topics sort of would you like to have your event card address?

Catherine Weetman [00:36:35] Consumer and citizen activism, I think, and as well as we're talking this week by some, the podcast goes out, you know, hopefully it spread even in even further and wider. But what we were talking before the we started recording about these students and school children activism that's spreading across a number of countries in Europe with children playing truant for a few hours to go and demonstrate about the need to take action on climate change. And in the UK, that's happening this Friday, the 12th of February, I think it is. So I know that the 12th, the 15th it'll be. So I'm hoping that that really goes mainstream and really starts to get consumers and businesses engaged with needing to do things differently. I think the whole thing around climate change and all the other issues that are, you know, that the circular economy helps resolve. A lot of people are so overwhelmed by the size of the challenge that we face that it just becomes one of those things that we can't see individually how we can solve the problem. And so it's easier to just focus on something that's closer to home. But I think the the activism and the interest in plastics and. People realizing that even if they do small things to reduce their own plastic consumption, to make sure they recycle properly, that actually makes people feel much better about their impact on the world. It's something very tangible that you can kind of see that you've made. Even though it's small difference, you can feel that it's within your control. So this whole you know. Badgering politicians and businesses. You know, the World Economic Forum had the- Forgotten the name, Greta.

Katie Whalen [00:38:35] Yeah. At her last name is-

Catherine Weetman [00:38:39] Yeah. That's bad news. Anyway, well done, Gretta, and she spoke at the World Economic Forum and, you know, really took them to task. And that's what it needs is is, you know, all of us to be being vocal about this. And then, you know, demanding demanding a circular economy as well as business, trying to create it. If all of us are demanding the right to repair and the right to have things, it's a recyclable a made from sustainable materials in a fair way and starting to make our buying decisions based on those criteria, then I think the tipping point in that will be will be very soon. And so I'm I'm really hoping the Friday demonstration turns into something, you know, that really goes mainstream. And even though I'm well past school age, I'm planning to go to the one in Leeds.

Katie Whalen [00:39:29] Yeah. I also hope that it will really gain some traction. And I couldn't think of a better way to sort of and our conversation, especially since we talked about not only the role that businesses have in going circular, but also the role that, you know, consumer engagement and the power of the crowd has. So thank you so much, Catherine, for joining me today.

Catherine Weetman [00:39:55] Thank you for inviting me, Katie. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Katie Whalen [00:39:59] You're welcome. And I just wanted to ask, where can listeners go to find out more about you and your book?

Catherine Weetman [00:40:06] If you tweet me, it's @CJWeetman, W-E-E-T-M-AN and the website is www.Re-think, which has a hyphen in it. So it's R-E, hyhen, T-H-I-N-K dot M-E dot UK.

Katie Whalen [00:40:25] That's all for today's show, but remember our Earth Day giveaway? To have a chance at winning a copy of Catherine's book, all you need to do is leave a review for this podcast on iTunes. You have until May 1st to do this because on May 1st, I'll be selecting one review at random and they'll be the lucky winner. To learn how to leave a review on iTunes, even without an account, head over to the show notes of this episode at gettinginthelooppodcast.com. If you've already left a review, don't worry, you'll automatically be considered. Okay, so how easy is that? I'm super grateful to Catherine for giving me a copy of the book to give away, and I can't wait to see your reviews and be able to share this book with you. See you next week. And until then, have a great rest of your week.

Katie Whalen [00:42:33] Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode or show notes and links. Go to our website at gettinginthelooppodcast.com, and while you're there, subscribe to our mailing list to have new episodes delivered to your inbox every Monday. See you next week.