What the experts say
Walter Stahel on the Performance Economy
Professor Walter Stahel provides an insight into the opportunities posed by shifting towards a ‘performance economy’.
Point of view: Walter Stahel on taxation
"Taxing renewable resources is against the logic of a sustainable society. Human labour – work - is a renewable resource which has not been recogni...
An evening with Alex Steffen and Ellen MacArthur at the RGS.
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the University of Bradford are happy to welcome Alex Steffen, editor of the best selling book WorldChanging and...
Non-linear systems… and preconceptions.
Myths are powerful, neither true or entirely false, they point to sensitivities around how we think of ourselves. Its quite easy to spot them. If i...
Prosperity, money and the circular economy
What we know. In a circular economy energy flows through, but is increasingly based on current sunshine rather than fossil stocks; materials cycle ...
Cleaning chemicals & chemistry education
"Today’s chemists have been brought up in the age of petroleum and we have been educated in the spirit of that age - petrochemistry", says Professo...
Materials Cycles and Critical Thinking
It’s a tough world for business when oil prices rise. In the soft drinks industry packaging often uses oil based PET - and according to plastics in...
Rethinking the Economy
Roland Clift and Julian Allwood outline how industrial ecology, applying chemical engineering thinking to the management of material flows in the e...
Why waste should be food.
The idea that recycling is a ‘good thing’ pretty much pervades the formal schooling system, but it may be due for a long overdue rethink. Recent s...
Curriculum Development and Outreach
Using a clear, positive, coherent framework around the notion of a circular economy we aim to act as a catalyst to inspire people to re-think, re-d...
The fool on the cliff.
Back from Hamburg and some training with the EPEA folks, who are well known as consultants and experts on the ‘cradle to cradle’ (C2C) approach to ...
Point of View: Professor Tim Jackson's take on prosperity
"The global economy is almost 5 times the size it was half a century ago", says Professor Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey, who sits on the ...
When technology is not enough: problems vs predicaments
If only it were just about technology, y’know redesign a telephone for easy disassembly, perhaps shift to bioplastics for some of it, rework the co...
Dr Mae Wan Ho - Food after Peak Oil
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho is best known for pioneering work on the physics of organisms and sustainable systems; also a critic of genetic engineering biotechn...
A correspondent writes… blue, C2C, circular, closed loop?
I have just had a bad day in the snow. A v v bad day as Bridget Jones would say and its not just the snow falling in quantity or the slight contact...
The power of feedback.
It's a puzzling old world. No sooner has the IEA’s latest outlook on world oil (1) announced that as far as conventional and cheap-to-extract oil i...
The Energy Debate - Do you have the facts to make your choice informed?
Rob Sauven, Managing Director of Vestas Wind Technology UK, sits on the board of Directors of RenewableUK. He gives us his views and invites us to ...
Promote life!
“Plans are stronger when design is firmly based on a good concept”, say Dutch architects Ro Koster and Ad Kil, who form RO&AD Architecten, combinin...
Challenging common conceptions: Professor Michael Braungart in his own words
Michael Braungart is a chemist, and the co-author of “Cradle to Cradle, remaking the way we make things”.
“Current systems drive consumption more than consumers”
Professor Birkeland, author of "Positive Development: From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Cycles through Built Environment Design", answers our questi...
Closed Materials Loops and Communities
What cheap oil and gas hath torn asunder shall expensive energy bring together? ‘We don’t know’ is the honest answer.
The energy game
We know we need to generate useable energy, and we know what the options are. So what would you choose? Make your own choices based on your own val...
Load, Fire… erm… Aim?
The challenge of moving to a sustainable low carbon economy is huge, so doing something always seems better than doing nothing - yet panic is not a...