How Communities Can Enable the Circular Economy

Lucy Siegle is a writer and broadcaster on nature and climate. In 2020 she became chair of the Real Circularity Coalition, an organisation that advocates for true circularity and truly circular materials and processes. Over many years she has specialised in the environmental and social footprint of the global fashion industry and is the author of To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing out the World (4th Estate/HarperCollins) and Turning the Tide on Plastic: How Humanity (and you) Can Make Our Globe Clean Again (Orion/Hachette 2019).

She exec-produced and appeared in The True Cost, the Netflix feature documentary also on the fashion industry. She co-founded the Green Carpet Challenge with Livia Firth, a mechanism for mainstreaming stories on global justice and the fashion supply chain. For 14 years she was a columnist at The Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, writing on ethical living for a consumer audience and created the long running Ethical Awards dubbed the green Oscars (2005-2015)

On TV, Lucy reports for The One Show, BBC1, a prime time magazine show for a large audience. She has also presented a special edition of ITV Tonight on microplastics and human health. With the filmmaker Tom Mustill, Lucy created and cohosts So Hot Right Now, a podcast produced by Sony and Picture Zero for anyone interested in telling the story of nature and climate. She also works with Ellie Goulding on climate activism and recently founded The Palace Paddle, an endurance kayak event to raise money for Samburu Girls Foundation.

Photo credit to Zoe Law.

Rob Greenland is co-director of Social Business Brokers CIC - a Leeds-based social enterprise that works with people and organisations to come up with collaborative solutions to complex problems.

Rob has worked in social enterprise all his life - starting out working for a Fairtrade co-operative, and then working in a number of social business support roles.

He co-founded Social Business Brokers in 2010, and they are best known for their Empty Homes Doctor service, and for Zero Waste Leeds.

The aim of Zero Waste Leeds is to build a movement - engaging people and organisations across the city in a range of practical, collaborative projects to reduce waste. They were local partners on the on-the-go recycling project Leeds By Example, led by environmental charity Hubbub, and other current projects include setting up a network of school uniform reuse projects in Leeds, and a campaign to increase glass recycling.

Jo Dainton is currently the Reuse Coordinator at Bristol Waste Company, responsible for setting up and running Bristol’s first reuse shop at a Household Recycling Centre. The Reuse Shop provides a second chance for high-quality usable items which would have otherwise been disposed of; both reducing landfill tonnages and creating an outlet for affordable household items for local people.

Prior to this she worked in Community Engagement at Bristol Waste focusing on behaviour change around waste and recycling across the north of the city. Jo has experience working at grass roots level to enact change in communities in Glasgow; delivering Zero Waste Scotland initiatives as well as working with young people to regenerate highstreets through pop up art events.

Rebecca is Sea-EO of City to Sea, an award-winning not-for-profit organisation, campaigning to stop plastic pollution at source. Our award-winning campaigns tackle the single-use plastic items most found on our beaches and in our rivers and oceans by providing practical, solutions-focused initiatives and advocating reuse over single-use.

In 2020, Rebecca was listed in Management Today's 35 Women Under 35 list, the country's longest-running, most prestigious list of young, female business talent. In 2019 Rebecca was listed in the WISE100, recognising the most inspiring and influential women in social enterprise, impact investment and mission-driven business.

Prior to City to Sea, Rebecca worked at consultancy Eunomia. It was through working with the European Commission on their now passed Single-Use Plastics Directive, that Rebecca felt inspired to do more in the fight against single-use plastic.

Rebecca moved to Bristol, after 10 years shaping sector leading community programmes with a variety of companies and not-for-profits in London. Whilst working in the charitable sector, Rebecca won a variety of industry awards including a Corporate Engagement Award, Utility Week Award, Better Society Award, Business in the Community ‘Big Tick’ Award and Business Charity Award.

She is an accomplished and commercially savvy individual, who is truly passionate about helping businesses balance profit and purpose.

Ric Casale is one of the founding trustees of Carbon Copy – a solutions hub that helps bring together the initiatives needed to accelerate climate action, connecting local communities, councils and companies who share the goal of a carbon zero future. He is an entrepreneur with a track record in taking ventures from concept to market. Ric has studied renewable energy with the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) and urbanism at London School of Economics. He is the author of "Civic Revolution. A Citizen's Guide" about the power of place-based civic action in leading transformative environmental change.

As the host of this event series on accelerating local climate action collectively, Ric would like us to be inspired by the variety of practical projects and the different ways people collaborate to get things done.