The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a global nonprofit that works with businesses, academics, policymakers, and institutions to advance the transition to a circular economy that eliminates waste and pollution, circulates products and materials, and regenerates nature. The organization was founded by Dame Ellen MacArthur, a professional sailor who broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe. After spending 71 days alone at sea, she returned with new insights into the way the world works and the fragility of the systems we’ve built.

In this interview, Andrew Morlet, CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, talks with Oliver Wyman Partner Jennifer Tsim, sharing the story behind the Foundation, their vision for 2030, and how they are collaborating with others, including Oliver Wyman, to build a regenerative, restorative economy.

Jennifer

Hi everyone, thank you for watching this video, my name is Jenny Tsim. I’m a Partner at Oliver Wyman in the Financial Services practice and head of our Climate and Sustainability Platform. Today, I’m very delighted to be joined by Andrew Morlet, he’s the CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to have this conversation with us.

Andrew

Thank you for having me.

Jennifer

Great. Andrew, do you want to want to talk a little bit about your role, introduce yourself and also the mission of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation?

Andrew

So, I lead the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. I came in really to help build the business programs and take the mission of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation a bit larger. We had really one mission which was accelerate the transition to a circular economy, and what we’ve tried to do is to both develop that idea and to promote it quite actively and to also stand up some pretty significant demonstrations of that idea into various topics like plastics, fashion and food.

Jennifer

Can you talk to us a little bit about the story behind the Ellen MacArthur Foundation? How did it come about?

Andrew

Well, Ellen MacArthur, who was formerly a professional sailor, really was interested in the idea of sustainability or the finite nature of things, and as a sailor, she really understood that what she had on the boat was all she had, and she had to manage finite resources really tightly, and she had the idea that, that’s not unlike where we are in terms of planetary boundaries. As humanity, we have finite resources, and we have an ecosystem that we sit in. She was trying to understand, really in the very early days, what role she could have and what role you could create to try to progress towards a vision of a system solution or a system that could work.

We did an initial analysis to quantify the economics of this idea, and we took it to the World Economic Forum in 2012, the very first report, and that got quite a bit of attention because we approached the problem in a different way, and we talked about it in terms of an economy that could work.

Jennifer

If you cast your mind back to when you took on the role of CEO, what in your mind were the main challenges for the organization but also the main opportunities for the organization at that point?

Andrew

Coming in, really, the challenge was that I think we had been talking about many of these issues for many, many years, and we had been approaching them in a way that wasn’t really connected to the core economic machinery. And this thinking was different, it was really saying how do we build a regenerative positive impact from the outset? So, it was both the idea and the approach. It was a compelling idea of an economy that was circular and regenerative by design. So, if you could get to that outcome, the more economic activity we drove, the better the world became, effectively. On the other side of that was, could you build nature-positive regenerative intention into the economy? I think, what I wanted to bring in when I joined, was the experience that I had through my career and having worked in industry and not coming at it from a sustainability perspective, coming at it from a how you design an economic model that works. And then building the approach that recognised that it needed to be a systems approach and that no single company can fix this.

Jennifer

The sustainability agenda has really gained momentum over the past few years. As someone who has been working in this space for over a decade, how have you seen the change in terms of the topic gaining traction or, even within corporations, the uptake of the circular economy as a topic? Have you seen any changes recently?

Andrew

Absolutely. This is a long-term journey because what we’re talking about is redesigning systems which, as I said, is quite complicated to do because it involves many actors. And what we’re working against is a linear extractive economic model that we’ve optimized for over 100 years, and we’ve applied incredible technologies towards. So, the linear extractive economic model is very powerful and embedded. But what we are seeing is there are many leading organizations and institutions that fully understand that transition needs to happen. I think what’s happened in the last few years is the climate agenda has really woken up the world that there needs to be a transition in energy and energy efficiency, but it's also waking up the world in terms of the interrelatedness of these issues. So, it’s not enough just to electrify everything, we have to actually rethink the way in which we make and produce things, including food, and that’s the epiphany that’s starting to play out. The fact that we invest so much energy into creating things and keeping them in use longer, is a really important part of the climate story. And that’s evolving, and that thinking is evolving, and it’s moving more and more upstream because people are recognizing it's not something you want to deal with after the fact, you want to design it into the products, and the food, and the fashion, and the built environment. So, it’s a design agenda to eliminate, circulate, and regenerate.

Jennifer

When you think about 2030, what is your vision for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation going forwards?

Andrew

I think what we would really hope that by 2030, that this thinking is really mainstream. People are understanding that the circular economy, it’s not a waste and recycling agenda, really, it’s a systems redesign agenda. Waste and recycling are important, but it's how we design and think about the system. And by 2030, I hope that idea is really well established, firstly. And secondly, by 2030, we want to see some real progress. We want to see hundreds and millions of tons of raw materials staying in the system, being utilized at higher value, for longer, so we can see the evidence of it.

Jennifer

How do you see that working in terms of working with Oliver Wyman and other firms to achieve that vision?

Andrew

It’s super important. As an organization, what we’ve recognized, is the power of the idea through a network of relationships. We now work with thousands of businesses around the world. We have a core network today of well over 300 businesses that we work with. We have a network of partnership relationships that are helping to drive aspects of the thought leadership, to drive aspects of the execution, and we are trying to really help accelerate the rate at which other organisations build confidence and capabilities in this area, so they can go out and be part of the transition. Working with Oliver Wyman is an important part of that for us, and with others, and its expertise and competence and capabilities, that we don’t want to build, we want to work with others to leverage and orient towards this thinking.

Jennifer

Thank you, Andrew, for joining and for sharing the extraordinary journey that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has gone through, and your own personal journey as well. Thank you for watching.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a global nonprofit that works with businesses, academics, policymakers, and institutions to advance the transition to a circular economy that eliminates waste and pollution, circulates products and materials, and regenerates nature. The organization was founded by Dame Ellen MacArthur, a professional sailor who broke the world record for the fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe. After spending 71 days alone at sea, she returned with new insights into the way the world works and the fragility of the systems we’ve built.

In this interview, Andrew Morlet, CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, talks with Oliver Wyman Partner Jennifer Tsim, sharing the story behind the Foundation, their vision for 2030, and how they are collaborating with others, including Oliver Wyman, to build a regenerative, restorative economy.

Jennifer

Hi everyone, thank you for watching this video, my name is Jenny Tsim. I’m a Partner at Oliver Wyman in the Financial Services practice and head of our Climate and Sustainability Platform. Today, I’m very delighted to be joined by Andrew Morlet, he’s the CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to have this conversation with us.

Andrew

Thank you for having me.

Jennifer

Great. Andrew, do you want to want to talk a little bit about your role, introduce yourself and also the mission of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation?

Andrew

So, I lead the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. I came in really to help build the business programs and take the mission of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation a bit larger. We had really one mission which was accelerate the transition to a circular economy, and what we’ve tried to do is to both develop that idea and to promote it quite actively and to also stand up some pretty significant demonstrations of that idea into various topics like plastics, fashion and food.

Jennifer

Can you talk to us a little bit about the story behind the Ellen MacArthur Foundation? How did it come about?

Andrew

Well, Ellen MacArthur, who was formerly a professional sailor, really was interested in the idea of sustainability or the finite nature of things, and as a sailor, she really understood that what she had on the boat was all she had, and she had to manage finite resources really tightly, and she had the idea that, that’s not unlike where we are in terms of planetary boundaries. As humanity, we have finite resources, and we have an ecosystem that we sit in. She was trying to understand, really in the very early days, what role she could have and what role you could create to try to progress towards a vision of a system solution or a system that could work.

We did an initial analysis to quantify the economics of this idea, and we took it to the World Economic Forum in 2012, the very first report, and that got quite a bit of attention because we approached the problem in a different way, and we talked about it in terms of an economy that could work.

Jennifer

If you cast your mind back to when you took on the role of CEO, what in your mind were the main challenges for the organization but also the main opportunities for the organization at that point?

Andrew

Coming in, really, the challenge was that I think we had been talking about many of these issues for many, many years, and we had been approaching them in a way that wasn’t really connected to the core economic machinery. And this thinking was different, it was really saying how do we build a regenerative positive impact from the outset? So, it was both the idea and the approach. It was a compelling idea of an economy that was circular and regenerative by design. So, if you could get to that outcome, the more economic activity we drove, the better the world became, effectively. On the other side of that was, could you build nature-positive regenerative intention into the economy? I think, what I wanted to bring in when I joined, was the experience that I had through my career and having worked in industry and not coming at it from a sustainability perspective, coming at it from a how you design an economic model that works. And then building the approach that recognised that it needed to be a systems approach and that no single company can fix this.

Jennifer

The sustainability agenda has really gained momentum over the past few years. As someone who has been working in this space for over a decade, how have you seen the change in terms of the topic gaining traction or, even within corporations, the uptake of the circular economy as a topic? Have you seen any changes recently?

Andrew

Absolutely. This is a long-term journey because what we’re talking about is redesigning systems which, as I said, is quite complicated to do because it involves many actors. And what we’re working against is a linear extractive economic model that we’ve optimized for over 100 years, and we’ve applied incredible technologies towards. So, the linear extractive economic model is very powerful and embedded. But what we are seeing is there are many leading organizations and institutions that fully understand that transition needs to happen. I think what’s happened in the last few years is the climate agenda has really woken up the world that there needs to be a transition in energy and energy efficiency, but it's also waking up the world in terms of the interrelatedness of these issues. So, it’s not enough just to electrify everything, we have to actually rethink the way in which we make and produce things, including food, and that’s the epiphany that’s starting to play out. The fact that we invest so much energy into creating things and keeping them in use longer, is a really important part of the climate story. And that’s evolving, and that thinking is evolving, and it’s moving more and more upstream because people are recognizing it's not something you want to deal with after the fact, you want to design it into the products, and the food, and the fashion, and the built environment. So, it’s a design agenda to eliminate, circulate, and regenerate.

Jennifer

When you think about 2030, what is your vision for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation going forwards?

Andrew

I think what we would really hope that by 2030, that this thinking is really mainstream. People are understanding that the circular economy, it’s not a waste and recycling agenda, really, it’s a systems redesign agenda. Waste and recycling are important, but it's how we design and think about the system. And by 2030, I hope that idea is really well established, firstly. And secondly, by 2030, we want to see some real progress. We want to see hundreds and millions of tons of raw materials staying in the system, being utilized at higher value, for longer, so we can see the evidence of it.

Jennifer

How do you see that working in terms of working with Oliver Wyman and other firms to achieve that vision?

Andrew

It’s super important. As an organization, what we’ve recognized, is the power of the idea through a network of relationships. We now work with thousands of businesses around the world. We have a core network today of well over 300 businesses that we work with. We have a network of partnership relationships that are helping to drive aspects of the thought leadership, to drive aspects of the execution, and we are trying to really help accelerate the rate at which other organisations build confidence and capabilities in this area, so they can go out and be part of the transition. Working with Oliver Wyman is an important part of that for us, and with others, and its expertise and competence and capabilities, that we don’t want to build, we want to work with others to leverage and orient towards this thinking.

Jennifer

Thank you, Andrew, for joining and for sharing the extraordinary journey that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has gone through, and your own personal journey as well. Thank you for watching.