10 Seasons In: What I’ve Learned From Listening to the Circular Economy

HappyPorch Radio is now in its tenth season, which still feels quite remarkable when I think about it.

One of the things I enjoy most about working at HappyPorch is that I get to spend my days learning about the circular economy. It is a topic I have been interested in for a long time, and I am happy to work for a company that focuses on helping businesses move towards a more circular future.

My role is mostly in marketing, and over the last few years I have spent a lot of time listening back to podcast conversations while creating content from them, anything from show notes to short audiograms. Usually, I am looking for the moments that capture the heart of an episode: a story, an interesting idea, or a quote that makes someone want to hear the full conversation.

And after listening to many conversations, I started noticing similar patterns.

The guests we speak with often work on completely different problems. Some are building repair platforms, some are tackling food waste, some are creating new approaches to resale and rental, and others are working with data and infrastructure that supports circular systems.

Yet many conversations keep coming back to the same themes.

The circular economy is not only about technology. It is about people, collaboration, changing behaviours, and rethinking systems that were designed around a linear way of doing things.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned from listening to HappyPorch Radio is that technology matters, but it is only one part of the story.

Looking beyond the technology

When I started working more on the podcast, I expected technology to be the main focus. After all, many of the companies we speak with are building digital platforms, using data, or applying new tech to solve problems.

But over time, I noticed that the most interesting parts of the conversations were often not about the technology itself. They were about understanding the problem properly and making sure the solution works for the people actually using it.

Thierry Sanders of Kolekt described this instinct better than I could. "If you give someone a hammer, they're always gonna look for a nail to hit. So one of my hammers is technology." Before reaching for it, he spent two weeks in Bali riding around with a waste collector, buying him cigarettes and lunch, trying to understand the actual problem: collectors were losing roughly half their time and fuel knocking on doors where there was nothing left to collect. The technology came after that understanding, not instead of it.

Our conversation with Anastasia Dellis from Orbisk was a similar example. Orbisk uses AI and computer vision to help commercial kitchens understand their food waste. The technology is impressive, but what stood out to me was the thinking behind the product. Kitchens are busy places, and any tool that adds extra work for chefs and staff will struggle to become part of everyday routines. The success of this solution comes from making it easy to use and fitting it into the reality of how people already work.

I noticed the same pattern in conversations about waste, repair, resale, and rental. The companies making progress are not only building technology. They understand the people, habits, and systems around it.

There is no simple path to circularity

Another thing I have learned is that there is no single answer to creating a circular economy.

It is tempting to look for one solution that can solve the problem. One technology, one business model, or one approach that can be copied everywhere.

Tandi Tuakli said this out loud in one of our reflection episodes, looking back over a season of interviews about rental. She admitted she had been "subconsciously looking for some sort of clear magic bullet," and found instead that there is "no one clear strategy, clear process." The line I keep coming back to is the one that followed: "It's not a copy paste."

This came through strongly in our conversations about rental models generally. At first, it might seem like there should be one clear formula for making rental work. But the reality is much more complex. What works for one product category or customer group might not work for another. Companies have to experiment, learn, and adapt.

Cathy Benwell of A Good Thing, whose platform matches businesses with surplus items to charities that need them, was refreshingly honest about this kind of uncertainty. She spoke openly about worrying that making it easy to pass things on might let businesses relax about what they buy in the first place. "That definitely makes us uncomfortable," she said. "I don't have answers to either of those, but we definitely do think about those." That kind of honesty, rather than a tidy answer, is often what stays with me after an episode.

I think this is one of the most interesting parts of the circular economy. It is still evolving, and people are figuring things out as they go.

The human side of change

Another theme that keeps appearing across episodes is the importance of people.

Before listening to these conversations, I think it would have been easy to see circularity mainly as a technology challenge. Better systems, better data, better tools. Yes, those things are important, but they only work when people use them well.

David Watson of Circular Connect summed this up in one line: "Technology is an enabler, but the catalyst to all of this is a human element." Much of his own work is about building the directories and newsletters that keep people connected between conferences, because, as he put it, "there's silence for 12 months until the next networking event." The technology he builds only matters because of the relationships it is meant to support.

This came up again in our conversation with Tom Passmore from Dsposal. His work focuses on helping organisations understand waste data and what happens to materials after they leave a business or household. But the interesting part was not only collecting more data. It was helping people ask better questions.

The journey starts with knowing where something went. But eventually, the question becomes why it happened. Why did waste increase? Why are materials ending up in certain places? What could be changed earlier in the system?

That shift is where data becomes useful.

The same applies across the circular economy. A repair platform only works if people choose repair. A resale marketplace only works if people trust buying secondhand. A food waste solution only works if kitchen teams can actually use it.

The challenge is not only creating better tools. It is creating solutions that fit into real life.

What I have learned from listening

I don't have a technical background, which is probably one of the reasons I enjoy these conversations so much.

I am not the person building the software or designing the systems we discuss. Instead, I get to listen to the people who are doing that work and learn from their experiences.

What interests me most is not only the technology itself, but the thinking behind it. Why did someone decide to solve this particular problem? What challenges did they face? What did they learn along the way?

Jo Weston put something into words during one of our mid-season reflections that has stuck with me. "If you think you're gonna have a fully polished circular model that works from day one, think again." Her advice was to "embrace the messiness and see it as a fun process of discovery and improvement rather than a pain in the neck." After listening to so many conversations, that feels like the most honest way to describe where the circular economy actually is.

It is being built through many different efforts happening at the same time. It is founders trying new business models, organisations finding new ways to collaborate, and people questioning systems that have existed for decades.

There is no single right answer, and there is still a lot to learn.

That is what makes HappyPorch Radio so interesting to me. Every episode brings a different perspective and shows another part of the bigger picture.

The more conversations we have, the more I realise that the circular economy is not just about what technology can do. It is about how people use it, how organisations work together, and how we continue learning along the way.

And after ten seasons, I still feel like we are only getting started.