Turning Your Business Model Circular With Elin Bergman

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung talks to Elin Bergman, the circular economy queen of Sweden, to talk about her company, cradlenet, as well as her career in sustainability.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

I our ‘Circular Friday’ meetings we teach businesses about the latest news in the circular economy, we invite speakers, experts and scientists. It’s unique that we meet our members every single Friday. On top of that we hold regular member’s meetings where we go deeper into subjects like standards and legislations, so they know what to do. We also do projects and write reports as well as pushing a lot of content out on social media and our website.
Sweden has clean streets, and we’ve fought a lot of environmental problems successfully, but it’s extremely not sustainable, we push things out of sight and out of mind. We have fantastic wate systems and so on, but when it comes to circularity, we really destroy the precious resources we have and emit a lot of carbon.
The reason for that is that we’re quite rich, we can afford to have big, heavy cars, we buy clothes like crazy people, every time we move somewhere we rip out perfectly fine kitchens because we want to put our own stamp on things, and we have multiple houses with the country house standing empty for most of the year.
We’re destroying many of the precious resources we need for the renewable energy transition. We only have a certain amount of gold, copper, aluminium and so on, but right now we’re acting as if it will never run out. But prices are going up, there’s less to dig up out of the ground, and at the same time we’re wasting it by dumping it in electronic waste dumps and burning it. We really need to fix this system and the circular economy is a great way of doing that.

BEST MOMENTS

‘Finland is much better at the circular economy than other countries.’

‘The planet is only 7.2% circular, and that number is going down. In Sweden it’s even worse: Only 3.4% circular, which means we’re one of the 20 worst countries in the world when it comes to circularity and over-consuming.’

‘If we don’t take care of the way we consume and produce things then we’ll have a problem.’

‘Recycling is the last thing you should do in the circular economy, it’ about resource efficiency and looking after the precious resources that we have. New things are coming into the circular economy every day, I’m never done learning about it.’

ABOUT THE GUEST

Elin Bergman: I am passionate about accelerating the transition to a circular economy that enables humanity to live in harmony with nature. I have over 16 years of experience working in sustainability, working at organisations such as WWF, sustainability consultancies and the Haga Initiative.

I currently work as the Chief Operating Officer, Vice Chair and spokesperson of the leading business network for circular economy in Sweden - Cradlenet. In that role I also serve as an advisor for various initiatives and being part of the reference group of the Swedish Delegation for circular economy, and the Circular Economy Coalition.

In 2018 I co-founded the Nordic Circular Hotspot, a platform that connects and showcases circular economy actors and initiatives in the Nordic region and beyond. The organisation now has managing partner organisations in all Nordic countries.

ABOUT THE HOST

Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing & home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand.

In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools & colleges.

Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring & digital marketing company.

Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people & planet.

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