174 Sydney Harris and Jennifer Carrigan of Upstream: effective, equitable reuse systems

We learn about driving change towards an effective, efficient and fair reuse economy, with Sydney Harris and Jennifer Carrigan of Upstream, a nonprofit that works to support sustainable, equitable reuse systems across North America. Upstream works to normalise reuse, to support the expansion of the reuse sector, and to help create supportive policy measures. It was founded over 20 years ago, and is seen as an early visionary, realising that reuse is better from an economic perspective as well as better for people and planet. Upstream works across industry sectors in the US and Canada.

Giulio Bonazzi is the visionary leader of Aquafil, a global pioneer in circular materials including Econyl Regenerated Nylon. Giulio has been transforming Aquafil from a conventional manufacturer into a pioneer of circular design, and he tells us about the process of creating premium-quality polyamide from a wide range of nylon waste streams, including fishing nets, old carpets, and fabric scraps.

To close out 2025, I’d like to revisit a critical aspect that’s being ignored - the economy itself. Ken Webster is a leading thinker in the circular economy field, and one of his many roles is with Earth4All, where he has been exploring the benefits of a Universal Basic Dividend. Ken and Catherine discussed this, and more aspects of circularity at an economic level back in 2023, and it’s highly relevant today, as the challenges we face loom larger.

This is the 2nd part of my conversation with Tom Llewellyn of Shareable, an organization that collaborates with others to imagine, resource, network, and scale cooperative projects. • We hear about Shareable's How-To Guides, which cover a vast range of topics from how to reduce food waste to starting mutual aid funds, and Tom explains how sharing initiatives are starting to be included in city and local government policies. • And Tom offers his top tips for how we can get started with sharing and other initiatives, to improve our resilience and build stronger communities. If you didn’t catch the first episode, head back to that if you’d like to hear why Shareable has pivoted from storytelling to focus on supporting groups to replicate successful sharing solutions, what Tom sees as the key challenges around sharing, and the importance of storytelling – including the misleading narratives used by most of the media, and how these undermine our resilience.

We discuss the importance of sharing and its many benefits with Tom Llewellyn, the Executive Director of Shareable, which collaborates with others to imagine, resource, network, and scale cooperative projects. Tom helps communities develop Libraries of Things (LoTs) and other forms of low-cost, environmentally friendly social infrastructure that help people meet their material needs. Tom’s current work includes expanding these sharing initiatives into housing developments, universities, and post-disaster recovery areas. He also serves as executive producer and host of the award-winning documentary film and podcast series The Response, producer of the Cities@Tufts Podcast, and communications lead for the Rural Power Coalition. Tom has co-founded several community- and sharing-based initiatives, including: A PLACE for Sustainable Living, Asheville Tool Library, REAL Cooperative (Regenerative Education, Action & Leadership), and the worker collective Critter Cafe. Shareable wants to see a just, connected, and joyful world where sharing is daily practice and communities flourish. Its current focus is on sharing hubs & infrastructure, Mutual Aid projects, and supporting and strengthening democratic, community-controlled cooperative businesses and organizations. We covered a lot, and so the conversation is split into two episodes. In Part 1, we hear why Shareable has pivoted from storytelling to engagement and support for groups to replicate successful sharing solutions. We discuss some of the key challenges and barriers to sharing, and what we can gain from sharing and other forms of mutual support We talk about a few different types of sharing initiatives, including community infrastructure projects. Tom explains the importance of storytelling, particularly in the context of disasters, and how the media often uses narratives that undermine our natural resilience and willingness to support each other. In Part 2 (available now), we cover the How To Guides, which cover a vast range of topics from how to reduce food waste to starting mutual aid funds, and Tom’s tips on how to get things started. You can hear my takeaways at the end of each section.

Dr. Patrick Schröder, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, assesses the progress and barriers for circular economy policymaking. Patrick Schröder specializes in the circular economy, climate change, resource governance, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). His work brings together science, policy, and media to help further evidence-based policies, communicate complex sustainability issues, and promote equitable governance solutions at the multilateral level. Patrick is currently the Coordinating Lead Author for one of the three working groups for the IPCC Assessment Report 7, reporting on Mitigation of Climate Change, and he is also the Coordinating Lead Author for the UN Global Environment Outlook 7. Patrick holds a PhD in Environmental Studies, and is now studying part-time for a second PhD in circular and regenerative design with the Centre for Sustainable Design. In 2024, UNIDO and Chatham House published a ground-breaking global stocktake of 75 national circular economy roadmaps featuring more than 2,800 policy actions. The first roadmap, from Japan, was published in 1999, and since 2016, as governments strive to accelerate their circular transitions, over 70 countries have published national circular economy roadmaps and strategies. The review aims to ‘bridge knowledge gaps and shed light on critical aspects of these publications’, and the authors point to a ‘significant lack of focus on the need to ensure a just and inclusive’ transition, warning that a ‘lack of recognition of the need to work collaboratively with the global community’ risks derailing a global just transition. Patrick tells us how he currently sees the global state of play for circular economy policies and roadmaps, where progress is happening and from a policymaking perspective, what is holding it back. The team at Chatham House have created a micro-site – circulareconomy.earth – and Patrick tells us more about that, and how we can use it.

Author Catherine Weetman unpacks the new edition of A Circular Economy Handbook: How to Build a More Resilient, Competitive and Sustainable Business, giving you a preview of the big changes and new insights. The new, 3rd edition was published by Kogan Page in paperback and e-book format on 3 November 2025, and the print edition for the US and Canada is out on the 25th of November. The book aims to help people get clearer on how successful companies are finding ways to do better with less – in other words, creating value without pumping yet more resources through ever-growing systems of production and consumption. Use the discount code in the shownotes to get 25% off, with free worldwide shipping.

Bailey Bestul explains how imaginative reuse of architectural components can create exciting, unique and inspiring buildings. Bailey is a registered architect, researcher and author based in New York City. His book, Reuse of Architectural Components, published by Routledge, was inspired by Bailey’s extensive research throughout Europe after he was awarded a Fulbright grant by the Netherland-America Foundation. We discuss how architects, constructors and building owners are getting on board with circularity and reuse, and what might be getting in the way of ambitious circular approaches, and ask what architects, building owners and planners can do to help raise awareness of the benefits of reuse.

Long Way Home’s Hero School in Guatemala is a community-rooted educational initiative that transforms local trash into useful buildings. Matthew Paneitz first visited San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala, as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2002, and was deeply affected by this rural, Indigenous Maya community where 64% live in poverty and 27% in extreme poverty. People lacked clean water, reliable sanitation, resilient homes, steady employment, and quality education, and the air, water, and soil are all contaminated by waste and pollution. Unable to put this out of his mind, Matt returned in 2004 and founded non-profit Long Way Home. One of its major projects is Hero School, a project-based, community-rooted educational initiative grounded in Education for Sustainable Development. Between 2008 to 2025, the LWH team transformed 550 tons of trash (including 35,000 used tires) into the Hero School green-built campus.

Lisa and Mary O’Riordan are co-founders of HaPPE Earth, a circular business providing compostable Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) with an end-to-end waste management system that creates a nutrient rich fertiliser using this PPE, combined with the client’s food waste. The HaPPE Earth solution is ideal for a range of sectors including healthcare, food processing and other manufacturing industries. HaPPE Earth is replacing a highly problematic product made from single-use plastic, and helping to bust big myths around plastics and hygiene, which were strengthened during the pandemic. I met HaPPE Earth’s co-founders when I did some work for last year’s CIRCULÉIRE Circular Ventures Accelerator, funded by the Irish Government. HaPPE Earth was one of the supported ventures, and I’ve been super-impressed by how Lisa and Mary have used their systems-thinking, technical and entrepreneurial skills to win their first clients and set out bold ambitions for their business and the value it creates for people, planet and local economies. We’ll hear about their detailed criteria for the choice of raw materials, the systems they’ve created to make sure this circular solution is super-easy for clients, and how all the different users and decision makers are reacting to compostable PPE. Mary and Lisa tell us more about their career backgrounds and what led them to start HaPPE Earth, how they’ve overcome those misperceptions about the benefits of plastic, and how they plan to develop local supply chains to avoid PPE posing a major risk to resilience, as it did across many countries during the pandemic. And we hear about some of the shocking, unethical practices that encourage unnecessary consumption of plastic PPE.