Ep 139: Lily Cole & Ellen MacArthur: why we need optimism to shift mindsets

Lily Cole 00:00

I remember crying I cried in the tube reading it because it was just so bizarre and so innocuous, something as innocuous as cotton that we use in touch every day and you know lots of, of banal products could be having such a devastating impact was really eye opening for me.

Pippa Shawley 00:20

Welcome to the Circular Economy Show from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. I'm Pippa. In today's episode, we're circling back to a conversation between Lily Cole, the model, actress and activist, our founder, Ellen MacArthur, and our former Food Lead, Emma Chow. In the clip you just heard, Lily discusses her journey from fashion model to environmental activist. In this episode, she also tells Ellen and Emma why she considers herself an accidental entrepreneur, and what role she sees creatives having in improving society, the economy and the environment. She also quizzed Ellen on her move from competitive sailing to starting the Foundation. Lily joined us for summit 2020, shortly after the publication of her book, Who Cares Wins, when we were still in lockdown across the world. Emma started by asking Lily about her journey from the catwalk to writing the book.

Emma Chow 01:15

First of all, a big congratulations to you. It's been an exciting few weeks with the launch of your latest book, Who Cares Wins. And I'd love if you can kick off our conversation by just sharing a bit of your personal journey so far, all the way from those early days of your career sort of Bastion to where you are today exploring some of the biggest systemic challenges of our time and how we might solve them.

Lily Cole 01:42

Sure, big question. Your life in a nutshell, I'll do my best. So I started modelling when I was a teenager when I was 14, 15. And at first I kind of... I mean, it was very exciting. I was a kind of London city girl. And it was exciting to be travelling the world and meeting all these interesting people. But quite quickly, in the first few years, I had it brought to my attention that a few of the companies I worked with were having quite negative impacts and the way that they were managing potentially negative impacts in the way they were managing their supply chains. And I just started to unpick actually what a supply chain means. And when I was advertising a product or a brand, what were the implications of that. And I went on a real kind of journey of learning a lot. Learning about the very negative ways that supply chains can have an impact on the planet and people and then conversely trying to focus my attention on really positive examples. So looking for companies, brands, supply chains, were trying to do things in a better way. And selling to channel my energy that would probably otherwise have gone into like NGOs and planned perfect work. Instead into kind of social business and fair trade and more positive initiatives. I went on to found a few of my own companies, and consider myself somewhat of an accidental entrepreneur. Because I think the business is an economics is kind of running the planet right now. And we need to try and change the way that we're running the planet through economics. If we want to still have a planet that's healthy in, you know, 50 years time.

Ellen MacArthur 02:03

Lily, was there a moment you say you began to dawn on you, but was there one specific moment where you thought, oh, that you remember thinking this is this is not what I thought or this is not okay, or this is? This is something I need to explore further into?

Lily Cole 03:31

Sure. I mean, there are moments but it was also incremental, because I was on a journey of learning. But I'll share one, which is you know, being around being on the tube in London, I've been sent this report from the Environmental Justice Foundation, a charity that I'm a patron of still today. And they send me a report on cotton where they looked at the impact of cotton farming, and how a lot of child labour was using cotton farming at the time. The fact that the pesticides and fertilisers of use was causing a lot of health conditions and kind of cancers for farmers, and also devastating environmental consequences of water use and pollution going into, into the land. And I remember crying I cried in the tube reading it because it was just so bizarre and so innocuous, something as innocuous as cotton that we use in touch every day and you know, lots of kind of banal products could be having such a devastating impact was really eye opening for me. I think I thought previously of supply chains only as far as manufacturing. You know, we've heard there's been a lot of news around sweatshop labour and so it's kind of aware that that existed, and I hadn't actually really opened my mind to the real beginning of the supply chain, the farmers the raw materials. And then I had kind of big eye opening another big eye opening moment was on the positive side was going to garner with the body shop and meeting the women who make shea butter from the shea nut and seeing how positive some supply chains can be to communities when they're handled in a fair way. And the same with wild rubber supply chains in the Amazon, when you pay local, local people to make a living from the forest, you are basically paying them to protect the forest. And so yeah, there are examples, but it was all incremental.

Ellen MacArthur 05:19

It's interesting you say that you, you kind of you delve deeper, and you found a more profound understanding of something that you, you, you thought you knew about fashion, obviously, because you worked in the industry, but there's so much more further down the line. And I think that's something which really mirrors the experience I had of suddenly becoming aware that resources are finite. And my my head said, Well, of course, there's a solution, this must be okay. Because, you know, everybody uses resources. And the more you dig into it, the more you realise it's actually not okay, and there are so many elements of it, which are there, and in so many people's lives, but you only see it at the source, or you only find it at the source, like you know, like the supply chain. And the more you dig into it, the more you realise things are actually in many ways not okay at all. And that really mirrors mine, it was a journey of learning, I often use the same term myself that you start to realise something and then you keep uncovering stones and the more tones, you uncover the really the bigger the challenge seems to become. And it's very clear from your book that that's been that learning that you've been on.

Lily Cole 06:25

What was the standout moment for you of realising, you know, of deciding to focus on economics, I guess, as an agent of change?

Ellen MacArthur 06:34

Yeah, for me, I think there was a similar journey. And it wasn't a specific moment where I realised because I think it happened in stages. The first was suddenly on the boat being aware that that what I had was all I had, now I was trying to fix something and I thought I have to save every little thing I have on this boat, because you know, I can't get any more, there's no stopping to buy a little bit of plastic, if I need a bit of plastic or, or something to fix something, you suddenly realise that it's it's everything that you have with you. And it was when I came off the boat at the finish that I began to connect that with the global economy. And that happened for me through a moment of reflection, when I went down to the southern ocean to make a documentary for the BBC. And I was on the island of South Georgia making a programme about the wandering albatross. And it was the most extraordinary place, you know, hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest town, camping on an island in a tent with these magnificent birds around. And it really gave me thinking time for the first time. And I think it was there that I suddenly realised that that understanding of finite resources that I felt on the boat was exactly the same as our global economy. In a down there, we'd invested hundreds of 1000s of pounds in the whaling industry, we'd had 1000s of people living in South Georgia, you know, getting the whale oil and you know, love or hate whaling, it was a resource that we harvested. And we ran out and we left South Georgia, and all this industry was still there. And that made me reflect on the broader elements of the global economy. And I thought, but it's just the same, you know, we have finite resources vital for our economy, and it made me start to look for solutions. And the more I looked for solutions, the more I realised that they, they kind of weren't there at everything, the narrative was around, using less and travelling less, which of course, was absolutely vital, because we knew we had these finite resources, we had no catastrophic, climate change looming. But for me, nothing pointed to a solution. It was all around, you must do this. And you must do this. And it was for me that question of what does success look like? You know, where are we trying to get to? What? What's that? What's that? What's the goal, actually, was the fundamental question I had in my head? No, what's the goal, if you don't have a goal, you'll never get there. We can't get somewhere just by not doing things we need to know actively what we do do. And that really, that quest for knowledge is is what drove my journey of learning, which, like yours was many years. And the more you learn, the more you you come to understand.

Lily Cole 08:55

Reminds me you saying that have I explored this tension in the book between the wizard and the Prophet kind of archetypes, I'm referencing a different book by Charles Mann called the wizard and the Prophet, where he said that by and large, the environmental movement can be divided up into these two impulses, one, the wizard that we can innovate our way out of kind of crisis and through kind of, you know, technical skill, find solutions, and the prophets that argue that actually, we need to reduce and we need to simplify, we need to step back. And it's I feel like when you were saying that, it's almost like you're saying the prophets philosophy of just stop and use less is not enough that actually you need kind of the innovation that would come from the Wizard like archetype of, of circular design.

Ellen MacArthur 09:39

And I think what really hit me was, you know, as a young person growing up, thinking about what role you would play in the world. And you know, I knew what it felt like as a young person wanting to sail around the world. That was my goal. I have no idea how I managed to achieve it because I was the most unlikely sailor in the world coming from the middle of England, but because I had that goal and that ambition, I was able to make happen. And when I drew the parallels with the the learning around resources and how the economy works, I just felt if you were that young person growing up today, what's your goal? And your goal can't be just to not do this not do this. Obviously, you need to do the good things and not do the bad things. But there weren't enough good things there. I couldn't kind of get my head around what success looked like. And I found that really, really fascinating. And, and that that what is the goal was absolutely at the at the bottom of everything, we created the foundation that that created the foundation, if you like at the foundation, saying, Where are we actually trying to get to? And what does success look like?

Emma Chow 10:00

And really, when we think about moving out of the current paradigm, and perhaps this mindset of doing less harm, doing less, but actually imagining what's possible, from a positive vision perspective? And how can we create more good, we've spoken a bit about the role of business, but what what roles do you see business versus citizens versus government and policymakers having creating, manifesting this positive vision?

Lily Cole 11:04

Yeah, so I don't necessarily when I when I say that I focus on like supply chains and, and have focused on like capitalism as a way of creating change. It's not just, it's not just business in my mind. Because, to my mind, the capitalist global structure that we have, ie like money in the way that money flows, is the kind of most powerful language that's being spoken today. And it's having an enormous impact. And, of course, business has like a pivotal role in directing that flow of money. But business isn't doing that by itself, it's doing that in relationship with consumers, slash citizens, ie the individuals are buying the products or not, and services or not. And also with, of course, governments, because governments watch market trends. And they also have the capacity to regulate businesses and to create the right incentives and frameworks within which business can operate. So I see it as a kind of a dance that that everybody, unless they're living completely off grid, I mean, even off money, that everybody's part of and has a role to play in trying to kind of change, change the change the dance, change the tempo,

Ellen MacArthur 12:15

I think that's really interesting. And that, that resonates quite strongly with the work that we've been doing on systemic change. And know that that point you made about, it's not just business, but it's also government. And it's also citizens, you know, we try to just talk about people rather than consumers, because we don't actually want to consume anything other than food, you know, food keeps us alive, for sure you eat it, but you know, clothes, I don't want to consume clothes, I just want to use them and wear them. So we we talk around different context of how to talk about people, but but just stepping back and looking at that system, we set out trying to say how do you change a global flow of a certain material, and the first one we looked at was plastic, plastic packaging. And it's exactly that point is that if everybody today wanted to use a different material, all the citizens around the world, they couldn't, because the businesses aren't using them. And then if the some of the businesses want to shift to different materials or different business models, then that can be helped by policy. So you need to get policy involved, to change the system with business who want to make this happen, who's can then provide the system to enable the citizens to choose the right thing to build a circular model. And the three are completely interconnected. It's this. And it's it's that systemic change, which was so little talked of which you bring up in your book, actually, I've was reading this morning, and you were talking about changing the system. And that system means different things to different people. And I think that's really interesting. And how, how do you bring about that shift? Where do you start? And that's something that we've spent a lot of time looking at here at the Foundation.

Lily Cole 13:42

I have one other question, which is when you're describing that realisation on the boat, realising that resources are finite, how did you deal with waste? I mean, did you have any waste? And was that also part of the kind of problem space that when you're on a boat, you know, there's only so much waste you can put in a bin? Like, what do you throw overboard?

Ellen MacArthur 14:02

Nothing goes overboard at all, when you go around the world. So everything I had was, will all the food was freeze dried. So it was small, the worst polymers you can get, you know, metal plastic together, keeping the food dry inside, and you literally poured in boiling water, which you produce from a desalinate water. And then you ate the food, and then there was the packet. So all the packets got stacked, and bagged. And there was an area in the boat specifically for the waste. And when I got back, that all came out and went off to get landfill or incinerated. And that for me, I mean, I would I would never throw anything into the water. I would... you just don't do that when you're at sea. You protect what's around you. It didn't really dawn on me then. But it does strike you as such a strange phenomena that we can produce a material that I know keeps a salad fresh for two hours, three hours until it's bought at lunchtime, and it's good for 500 years and that to me, it's just it's a design flaw. And it always struck me so what are you asking the designer to design. And when they design that piece of plastic, because it's amazing science, it can, you know, keep it fresh and let bits of it breathe and all of those things, but actually, is it designed to last forever? Or is it designed to do that for a certain period of time? And, and that design question is something that we so often come back to at the foundation is what are you actually asking people to design,

Lily Cole 15:17

I always find it quite an amazing paradox both that there's so much plastic and food, which, as you say, is this weird combination of like the most short lived objects, i.e. food, with the most long lived objects, i.e. plastic, and also that you get so much plastic in kind of kids toys and diapers and wet wipes? Again, it's like, it seems so paradoxical that you're, you're buying these materials that are going to have a kind of long lasting negative effect on the planet to use for your children that are going to be the ones that inherit the planet.

Ellen MacArthur 15:52

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it just seems to me like a failure and design, you'd think that, you know, the nappies have so much value in them, you know, when I look at the work that Emma's working on around food, and cities, and, and all of that nutrient, and, you know, for for billions of years, the nutrients recycled, you know, leaves a fall, and people have fallen animals have fallen, rotted down and become the nutrients for that next cycle. And, and actually, not that long ago, we broke that cycle completely. And all of that, that value and nutrient coming into cities, is staying there. And it's not being valorized. It's not being put back into food and farming, we've kind of all of that, that huge flow of stuff into places isn't being regenerated, it's not being revalued. And it seems like a another design failure, that we're not able to recover that that valuable material and feed it back into the system and, and keep that system regenerating. So we don't have the same pressure on the natural ecosystems and the deforestation because we need more land and more land to grow things. But we have that regenerative nature of, of, you know, what we take gets fed back into a system to grow more. And I see that as being a real inspirational message for the next generation for those young people thinking, you know, I'm going to work in that I'm going to work on regenerative agriculture, and I love that positive element. And I like the way that your book is positioned to to be a positive light. Yes, there are these problems, you have to mention them, but actually look at what's going on. And and also you were very clear about some of the the the challenges in how you talk about things and how people take positions and you take positions. I found that very interesting, because you can't have this conversation without analysing things in your mind and thinking what what do I think about that? Do I you know, am I into the I'm gonna go completely off grid, am I into the regenerative business? Where do I sit in all this? You have to ask yourself that question. If you're thinking about it properly,

Emma Chow 17:40

it's a bit of a puzzle piece, or puzzle pieces. And that was something that I took from the book, too, and especially honing in on the food section, which I have the most existing knowledge about at least. And I just appreciated the Balanced View and realising that there is no silver bullet, but rather acknowledging what role urban farming has, what role alternative proteins have, and what role the different system actors all need to play in this orchestrated way to get all of those different pieces of the puzzle into place at that right moment, and the importance of timing. And just to pick up on the design piece, because that's so critical, whether you're thinking of redesigning a product or redesigning entire system. And Lily, I'd be interested to hear your views on how important the creatives are. And how do we inspire creatives to be such an important part of the shift that's needed?

Lily Cole 17:53

I think the creatives have an instrumental role to play. And I loved actually I know in the fount you and your foundation didn't I call my get it slightly wrong. But I know there was an announcement that was calling for, like millions of designers do circular design, is that right? As a kind of open call. I thought that was brilliant. Because we do need to galvanise the massive amounts of untapped creativity there is, you know, on the planet, young designers, you know, students that can think about these challenges and problems in new ways. I think that historically, I mean, I studied history of art, because I'm a big kind of believer in the power of art, and art. And it's kind of when I say art, in a broad sense, creativity in its kind of purest manifestation, I think, allows people to maybe see with an objectivity that's not caught up in existing the existing status quo and the existing kind of systems and society that we're in, and so can kind of help help humanity navigate into new ways of thinking and new ways of seeing the world. And so yeah, I'm really a big fan of the kind of creative spirit. And when it's applied to these kinds of very practical problems. I think that we have the capacity then to innovate and we're already seeing that, you know, we're already seeing kind of massive amounts of innovation happening across loads of different sectors.

Ellen MacArthur 20:01

That really makes me think of a story in the early days of the foundation. And we'd been working with students, and one of the students went up to his teacher, and he, and he was talking about his exams. And he said, You know, I couldn't think of anything to design. You know, everything's been done here. I am trying to think of a product to design. But everything's been done, he said, But now, so now I've learned about the circular economy, everything I see, I want to redesign. And I think it's all about opportunity. And it's all about creativity, and it's all about has everything to do. And I love the notion that the faster we do this, the better. You know, the faster we design in a circular way, the better. And there's often a tension between growth and competitiveness and growth and, and the, you know, the planetary boundaries. But actually, within circular economy, if you're building that regenerative, restorative model, if you're, you know, rebuilding natural capital as you go, then actually, the faster you can accelerate this, the better. This is something we want to grow fast. And I really liked that element about it, that it's about, it's about building the speed, it's about opportunity and creativity.

Lily Cole 20:59

And do you feel optimistic things are going in a in the right direction, based on you know, the last 10 years of your work in this space?

Ellen MacArthur 21:05

I think, am I optimistic? Yes, absolutely. I'm hugely optimistic. I've seen some incredible shifts in thinking in some very interesting areas of the economy. Now we work with government, we work with policy, and there's been huge shifts there in many countries in the European Union. Here in the UK, the circular economy package was announced just a few weeks ago. So this is all happening very, very quickly. And in 10 years, we've seen circular economy go from something which wasn't really discussed at all to something which is at the forefront of some of the major policy decisions. And actually, recently, Ursula von der Leyen from Europe was saying that she believes Circular Economy lies at the heart of the rebuild the rebuild back better after this COVID crisis. And it's wonderful to see the words in there and being used because it speaks of opportunity and creativity and economic benefits. And I think one of the biggest, to answer your question, one of the biggest things I feel I've seen is the the understanding of the circular economy, from a business perspective, from a system perspective, from a policy perspective as being a way out of where we are, from a climate perspective, from a materials perspective, from a pollution perspective. It's it gives a framework for designers, for policymakers, for businesses, to step out of the linear system and move to something which is regenerative and restorative, and has all of these other positive effects. And although we're not circular yet, and you know, I asked myself that question every day, how far are we on that circular journey? I think that some pretty major milestones have been set, and particularly on the work around plastic packaging that we've been doing. Now, there are 2025 targets, we have 20% of the global industry signed up to that we have some of the biggest brands in the world. And when you talk about reach and getting the circular message out to more and more people, however, it's described, the word circular economy may not even be there. But it's about building this circular system. The reach of those corporates is huge. And we're at a time now, I think after the crisis, where the dialogue between business and policymakers and government has never been stronger. And I think that gives us a really solid foundation for stepping up to the next level within circular activity, despite the challenges that the current global economy is facing.

Emma Chow 23:21

And Lily, I'd also like to just hear from you, because it's clear that both of you have such optimism, optimism in your spirits. And And during these especially challenging times where hope is easy to lose for many people around the world as we look externally. But from your perspective, and where you're at in this moment. What are you most hopeful about for the future?

Lily Cole 23:51

I think as I mean, as I try and capture in the book, which the subtitle is reasons for optimism in our changing world, I do have a lot of reasons for optimism. I'm less well versed, I'm aware of some of the changes, I'm less well versed in the changes in the specifically Circular Economy space. That's why I was interested to hear your thoughts on that. But it's no surprise to me, because I feel like there are so many changes happening across the business sector and the political sector pushing in the right direction. And there are lots of examples of that, whether it's the push towards stakeholder capitalism, and the fact that there is more dialogue around you know, reframing the league, the basic legal framework of capitalism away from being about profit maximisation, only for shareholders, towards other values and other responsibilities. I think there's been a sea change. You know, it's not absolute, but there's no sea change in the last year. That is really promising. To that end. I think the fact that universal basic income is looking like a more realistic policy that's being experimented and potentially implemented in different places around the world. He's really promising because we need to think about inequality and social security. And I think policy ideas like that have a lot of potential. And yeah, well, it'd be interesting see the results of those experiments. I think the kind of general awakening of an environmental consciousness is super positive, and amongst citizens and the collective and I think that's pushing higher standards, from industry and politicians. I think that, you know, politics is still far far, far from where it needs to be given the science. And I spend a lot of time worrying that we're not going to get where we need to go quick enough. But that being said, there have been really important strides made in the last few years in terms of netzero goals. And, yeah, kind of significant climate commitments from governments. So I'm, again, hopeful that things are going in the right direction, even if sometimes it feels like they're not going fast enough.

Pippa Shawley 26:01

Ellen and Lily said that optimism plays an important role in the transition to a circular economy, but we also need action. Over the next few months, we'll explore how we can accelerate that transition through new business models, supply chains and ambitious policies. I hope you'll join us for the next episode of the circular economy show. Thanks for listening