Thank you to everyone who joined us at Summit 21 this week. We hope you were able to attend the live sessions — and that you enjoyed them!
If you missed any, they are now available on catch-up.
You can also watch the sessions on YouTube.
We were delighted to welcome a great range of speakers over the three days and host a series of insightful and inspiring conversations — so please do watch them and share the links with your friends and colleagues, or on social media, using the #EMFSummit21 hashtag.
Here's a recap
/ Fix the economy, fix the climate
Dame Ellen MacArthur and Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Climate Change, discussed how the circular economycircular economyA systems solution framework that tackles global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. It is based on three principles, driven by design: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials (at their highest value), and regenerate nature. can tackle climate change
Erin Billman, Executive Director of the Science Based Targets Network, spoke about the importance of using data to measure the impact we are having on the environment and drive fundamental change
Felipe Villela, Founder and COO of regenerative agriculture accelerator ReNature, explained that tackling climate change and biodiversity loss relies on connecting smallholder farms to industrial supply chains
Nestlé CEO, Mark Schneider, and Unilever President of Foods and Refreshment, Hanneke Faber, shared their view on the role of big business in driving fundamental change in the food system
// Growth in a circular economy
Chile’s Minister of the Environment, Carolina Schmidt, shared her experience leading Chile’s circular economy roadmap
Wolfgang Blau, former Global COO at Condé Nast and now a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University and Foundation Trustee, joined Dame Ellen MacArthur to discuss what the transition from linear to circular means for profits, jobs, prosperity, and resilience
Financial Times Consumer Industries Correspondent, Judith Evans, hosted a panel on circular economy investment with Audrey Choi, Chief Sustainability Officer at Morgan Stanley, and Paul Bodnar, Global Head of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock
PVH Chief Supply Chain Officer, Bill McRaith, IKEA Global Supply Chain Operations Manager, Susanne Waidzunas, and H&M Head of Supply Chain, David Savman, discussed how global supply chains can be redesigned to facilitate growth while tackling environmental issues
/// Shifting the system
Lucy Parker, Senior Partner at Brunswick Group, Mariana Mazzucato, Professor and Founding Director at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, and James Quincey, CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, discussed how we actually ‘do’ systems-level change
Jyrki Katainen, former Prime Minister of Finland and now President of Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, highlighted systems change that is already happening and what happens when the market starts to transform itself
MIT Technology Review Editor at Large, David Rotman, was joined by Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Professor of Chemistry and Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and Sheila Kennedy, Professor of Architecture at MIT, to look to the future and discuss the role of AI and advanced manufacturing technologies in designing ecosystem destruction out of all systems entirely
