00: Hi, hello, hey there 🌎

How my crippling eco-anxiety drove me to start something new called Circularity Club

Tomorrow is Earth Day… so before your inboxes and feeds fill up with messages about buying things to save the planet, it’d mean the world to me if you’d take a moment to read this and sign up👇

I’m launching something new called Circularity Club, a space to start conversations about sustainable transformation with and for modern business people committed to the planet. 

For now, it’s a newsletter. The goal? To help professionals like you and me be more informed and inspired to adopt circular, climate-forward thinking into work and life. 

Why am I doing this? Because I’m fired up about the climate and environmental crisis and I’ve struggled with how to do something about it. I don’t think I’m alone.

I’m also inspired by people who are pushing forward circular ways of doing things in business – or in other words, re-thinking our broken take-make-waste systems to design regenerative, restorative solutions that are better for people, planet and profit. I believe this is the future, but we’re not talking about it enough. 

So, after many months of befriending my eco-anxiety and educating myself, I’m starting with what I know and doing what I’m already good at: storytelling, content, strategy and community building. 

To kick things off, you’ll get a 3-part series called Plastic Pandemic where I talk to a network of people working together to transform ocean-bound plastics recovered from the Andaman sea into new materials, products and opportunities. We all love to hate plastic, so it’s an obvious start – but I’m not stopping there. 

Fired up? Feel free to share this with a few friends. You can also follow Circularity Club on Instagram and join the Facebook group.

Everyone’s invited, except greenwashing.

Take care,
Lisa ✌️

P.S. If you want the long version on how my crippling eco-anxiety led me here, keep reading….

“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but climate change is not your fault. If I’ve learned one thing in the last six years reporting on this mind-blowing threat to humanity, it’s that our present crisis is mostly the result of greed, selfishness, short-sightedness, and apathy on the part of people and institutions with power.”

- EMILY ATKINS, CLIMATE REPORTER, HEATED

No humans in sight. Plenty of human debris.

It was April 22, 2020. Earth day. I’d recently left London on a one-way flight to Bangkok, just before the borders closed. Lucky me, I found myself socially distancing on a beach in Thailand, the country where I was born and raised.

With monsoon season approaching, the tides shifted, and this pristine beach became a waste dump. Amidst pink skies and palm trees, I was faced with an unsettling reminder of what lies below: endless bottles, toothbrushes, flip flops, styrofoam, fishing nets and microplastic (cue: the opening scene of much-discussed Netflix docu Seaspiracy).

Daily trash-collecting beach walks in lockdown became a contemplative practice.

As a Londoner, I’d considered myself to lead an eco-conscious lifestyle. I used a bamboo toothbrush, rode a bicycle, carried drinking receptacles, shopped at farmers markets, put things in recycling bins, composted, switched to shampoo bars, purchased expensive eco-fashion brands… I even attended a couple of climate marches.

My London summer 2019 environmental woke-ness.

I’d looked down on others who didn’t do these things. We vote with our wallets, I thought. Wasn’t it on as consumers to refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle?

Picking up bottle caps, diapers, rubber bands and bits of barnacled foam from the sand, only to have more manmade crap wash up the next day, I was suddenly painfully aware that the shiny #ZeroWaste lifestyle as seen on my Instagram feed was a ruse. 

Meanwhile, the world beyond the horizon was burning.

The hottest month in history had recently been recorded off the back of a hot summer of global climate marches. Forest fires had ripped across Australia and California. The atmosphere choked on air traffic fumes. Tides were rising. Cities were sinking. The oceans were boiling. Ecosystems were at the brink of collapse.

Me, being a nerd. Digging into Google Trends data.

Then, the coronavirus broke into a global pandemic, deepening social inequality in its wake. And we all know how things went from there…

“The reason that the climate crisis feels like the weight of the world is because it literally is, and it will feel that way—and it can crush you—unless you realize you’re not the only one carrying it.”

- MARY ANNAÏSE HEGLAR, CLIMATE JUSTICE WRITER, HOT TAKE

Heavy. My efforts to be an environmentally woke person suddenly felt futile. Hadn’t I just been giving myself a neoliberal pat on the back while I left the impending doom of the climate crisis for someone else to deal with? 

That’s when I made the decision to beat my environmentalist imposter syndrome. I ruthlessly began consulting Google for answers. I read books. I listened to podcasts. I subscribed to newsletters. I joined talks and courses. I stalked climate writers on Twitter. I lost sleep.

Here’s one important thing I learned: the climate and environmental crises aren’t my fault, or your fault, or the fault of the local fisherman down the bay dumping his nets and shampoo bottles in the sea.

Still, corporations and consumer culture have gone to great lengths to make it feel like it is – and that we can buy our way out of it. This individual guilt is dangerous, because it paves the way to apathy, and the worst thing we can do about a crisis is nothing. 

“Guilt saturates the planet’s air as much as carbon, though we choose to believe we do not breathe it.”

- DAVID WALLACE-WELLS, THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH

And another thing: one crisis doesn’t stop when another starts. Climate and environmental justice are deeply interconnected with social, political, racial and economic justice. None of this is linear or independent.

The plastics problem is not more or less important than relentless rising temperatures, carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere, industrial farming destruction or even a global pandemic. They’re all part of the same interconnected web of issues, though some more pressing than others. This is complex, often unsexy territory and so are the solutions that need to address them.

We are here because our systems are broken and fueled by greed, short-sightedness and apathy. Our linear take-make-waste global economy is at breaking point. You no longer need to listen to the experts or scientists to be convinced – just look at the news headlines. 

We have lived through the entire climate catastrophe in one generation. We have about one generation left to save it. The problems and solutions that we’re engineering now will determine whether or not we can protect a liveable future for ourselves and generations to come. We’re at a point of no return and time is running out. 

So where do we go from here?

Let me wear my strategist hat for a second:

“If the previous decade was defined by digital transformation, the next decade will be defined by sustainable transformation. This requires rethinking business-as-usual across every industry and sector in order to make a radical commitment towards the global sustainability agenda.”

- ME, AKA LISA ROOLANT

Now in normal people talk. Remember when businesses thought they didn’t need a website? Well, I’ll bet you that those businesses aren’t around or relevant anymore. I strongly believe the same is true for how every type of business now needs to take accountability for their impact on the planet and society. I don’t mean putting ‘conscious’ on a clothing tag, throwing around fancy terms like ‘net zero’ or putting ‘sustainability’ in a website footer and calling it a day. C-suite to grassroots, creative to strategic, small-scale to corporate, there is work to be done.

The UN 17 Sustainable Development Goals recognize businesses as a necessary partner for change. Legislation is catching up. Sustainability is not just a trend, nor should it imply figuring out how to keep doing something, even if it creates harm. 

That’s where circular economy comes in. It’s known as the only sustainability argument making it into boardrooms for a reason. Because it just. makes. sense. 

So why aren’t we talking about this more?

Exploring circularity as a concept restores my optimism. It’s about zooming out to see the way the world really works; as a dynamic, complex, interdependent system. It’s about taking things back to the drawing board in order to radically transform our economy. This is exciting because it creates pathways for innovation at its finest.

From fashion to tech to food, people around the world are pushing forward remarkable ways of doing things in ways that are regenerative, restorative and circular in their approach. Let’s learn from them. 

“Circular is a word meant to invoke the notion that by intention and design the feedback loops work to enrich, nourish, and add value. They, therefore, enable regeneration and restoration instead of lead to degeneration and consumption. It fits the economy to nature, not nature to the economy. The economy works better that way, and for much longer.”

- KEN WEBSTER, THE ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

The pandemic has shown us that humanity can come together in solidarity and take collective action, even if that means staying in our living rooms. So shouldn’t we be able to do this to show up for Mother Earth in her final hour? 

We must start thinking critically about the information we consume. We must demand better from the brands and products we build and buy. We must break out of our echo chambers to consider how our modern global economy impacts the global south and vulnerable communities. We must be advocates for systemic change at work, at home and in society at large. 

There’s power in starting conversations, telling success stories and sharing resources. So that’s what I’d like Circularity Club to be about.

If you’ve read this far, congratulations! People really don’t read anymore, so it felt like a great idea to start a newsletter 😉

👉 Email me at hello@circularity.club
👉 Follow on Instagram
👉 Join the Facebook group

Or, forward this email to a few fired up friends if you feel like it.