Introduction

Welcome to episode 49 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. It is such a pleasure to have Ashleigh Morris on the show with us today. Ashleigh has been recognised as one of our worlds most influential leaders in Corporate Social Responsibility. Ashleigh has dedicated her career to helping shift organisations to a more sustainable circular future for generations to come. She is joining us today to share knowledge on how organisations can move towards becoming more circular. Let’s get into the episode, Ashleigh thank you so much for your time. 

Key Takeaways 

There were two key takeaways for me from this episode

1.     Design, Maintain, Regenerate
How do we design out waste and pollution, maintain products at their highest value for as long as possible (which links back to the way we design products in the first place) and how do we  help to regenerate our natural system. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful, sustainable world where our economy is designed with no waste or pollution, products and services are maintained at a high level of value for a long time with a financial approach to suit and we all regenerate the natural world.

2.     Involve everyone in planning and execution 
This is such a common topic on this podcast. So many of our worlds experts who come on this show to discuss Enterprise Excellence raise this as a key topic in achieving sustainable change. Start with creating a plan, involve others and gain feedback, make adjustments. Then help others in your organisation form their aligned plans and approaches to executing them in a way that creates a connected organisational organism. An organisation system that can adjust and move quickly as one to create a better future. 

Two Minute Tip

So if you've never heard of the circular economy, or you've heard about it in the context of it's better recycling and better waste management, what I want to share with you is that it's about the economy. It's an economic model. And there's three key principles. And I would love you to reframe them as questions for your organization for your home life or your community or whether you know, your kids school, which are, how can we design out waste and pollution? How can we keep products and materials at the highest value for as long as possible? And how can we regenerate the natural system? I think if you had those those three principles, reframed as questions that will make sure that you're part of this new economy that we're trying to create, which is all about circularity, circulation of value versus extraction of value.

Quotes

09:47min So the circular economy is an economic performance based model that is designed to be restorative and regenerative. It has three key principles, which are really easy and logical, first, design out waste and pollution. So we're not dealing with waste at end of pipe here, we're designing it out through better processes. Keep products and materials at the highest value for as long as possible. We no longer want to make things to break, we want to build things to last and have a new commercial strategy to support that. Last is to regenerate natural systems. Look, we've gone so far beyond, you know, an approach to do less bad, we actually need to do more good. And for us to linear economies, extractive we take more than we ever give back to our natural environment. 

What next?

1. Read our article: How a business can move towards the circular economy
2. Download this simple work instruction on strategy

To learn more about what we do, visit https://enterpriseexcellencegroup.com.au/
Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.