Chris Houghton on Circularity

What is circularity, and why does it matter? As we seek to manage the climate emergency, companies are being challenged to play their part in being more sustainable. Which is where the concept of circularity comes in. This is the idea, in the context of sustainability, that a product is created with its own end-of-life taken into account.

In other words; businesses take responsibility, not just for producing an item, but for what happens after it reaches the end of its useful life. Whether that’s an item of clothing that is no longer wearable or a bottle that contained a drink that we’ve finished. In a circular economy, once the user is finished with the product, it goes back into the supply chain instead of to a landfill.

My guest on this episode is Chris Houghton. Many years ago, Chris and I worked together in financial services regulation. While I moved into the field of human risk, he’s gone on to work for energy and consumer companies and is now an advocate for circularity, which forms the core of the business he runs.

Chris is the CEO of Teemill; the world’s first open-source closed-loop apparel manufacturer. You can find out more about them by visiting their website: www.teemill.com

For more on Circularity see: https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/topics/circular-economy-introduction/overview

It’s a company that has shifted away from much of the conventional logic that is deployed by the majority of the apparel industry. Most obviously, the idea of producing clothes speculatively in the hope of selling them, rather than only producing them on demand, but also the idea of taking end-to-end responsibility for what happens to the clothes after the customer is no longer using them.

To connect with Chris on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-houghton-a28a408/

To pre-order my new book ‘Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics & Compliance' visit https://www.human-risk.com/humanizing-rules-book