Dame Ellen MacArthur
Dame Ellen MacArthur said at the British Science Festival that she plans to change the way we make, use and buy things, along with the way we innovate new products and educate people at school and university.
She told the Festival that her time as a round-the-world yachtswoman taught her “the true meaning of finite.” At sea, every bit of food, fuel and water had to be managed to make sure she won the race or survived the trip.
Bradford University, host organisation for the Festival, has just set up a postgraduate certificate course in collaboration with her organisation, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to train managers in her concept of “circular economics.”
The idea is to go beyond current concepts of recycling and into a world in which objects can be made again from their original materials and to their original level of quality.
Key to the idea is that in this world, people would tend to buy services rather than goods. Dame Ellen explained: “If you bought 3000 clothes washes instead of buying a washing machine, the manufacturer would take the machine back and remanufacture it.” This long-term commitment would go beyond the idea of recycling limited parts of the machine.
The Foundation is already working with a carpet tile manufacturer in the Netherlands which plans to take back and remake the tiles it rents out, reusing special machines to remake the base and the fibre surface material. Another collaborator is Renault, a leader in the introduction of electric cars. Dame Ellen said that renting rather than selling the expensive batteries for the cars is a key part of the business model.
She told the Festival that the Foundation is entirely funded by business. It is working mainly with industry but puts 20 per cent of its effort into schools and colleges. She said: “Work we have done with schools has shown that this approach is very inspiring for students. We did a project on landfill in which they asked why we have it in the first place, not just how to reduce it. The result was that students saw the relevance of physics, which had been too abstract before.”
Companies involved with the Foundation include Renault, National Grid, BT, Cisco and B&Q. Dame Ellen told the Festival: “The chief executive of B&Q stood up at a business conference in London and said that in future, the company might not sell anything.” Instead, it would have made a complete transition to delivering long-term services instead of goods.
She told the Festival that her time as a round-the-world yachtswoman taught her “the true meaning of finite.” At sea, every bit of food, fuel and water had to be managed to make sure she won the race or survived the trip.
Bradford University, host organisation for the Festival, has just set up a postgraduate certificate course in collaboration with her organisation, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to train managers in her concept of “circular economics.”
The idea is to go beyond current concepts of recycling and into a world in which objects can be made again from their original materials and to their original level of quality.
Key to the idea is that in this world, people would tend to buy services rather than goods. Dame Ellen explained: “If you bought 3000 clothes washes instead of buying a washing machine, the manufacturer would take the machine back and remanufacture it.” This long-term commitment would go beyond the idea of recycling limited parts of the machine.
The Foundation is already working with a carpet tile manufacturer in the Netherlands which plans to take back and remake the tiles it rents out, reusing special machines to remake the base and the fibre surface material. Another collaborator is Renault, a leader in the introduction of electric cars. Dame Ellen said that renting rather than selling the expensive batteries for the cars is a key part of the business model.
She told the Festival that the Foundation is entirely funded by business. It is working mainly with industry but puts 20 per cent of its effort into schools and colleges. She said: “Work we have done with schools has shown that this approach is very inspiring for students. We did a project on landfill in which they asked why we have it in the first place, not just how to reduce it. The result was that students saw the relevance of physics, which had been too abstract before.”
Companies involved with the Foundation include Renault, National Grid, BT, Cisco and B&Q. Dame Ellen told the Festival: “The chief executive of B&Q stood up at a business conference in London and said that in future, the company might not sell anything.” Instead, it would have made a complete transition to delivering long-term services instead of goods.
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