HappyPorch Radio: Circular Economy & Technology

What if waste is just material that has lost its way?

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, we go back into the archive to our 2023 conversation with Christian van Maaren, founder and CEO of Excess Materials Exchange, and Anne Rademaker of Rademaker Consulting. First published in Season 7, it comes with a new introduction from Barry on what has changed since.

Excess Materials Exchange works like a dating site for secondary materials and waste. It gives materials an identity through resources passport, then uses technology to match them with their highest-value next use. But as Christian and Anne explain, the technology is only part of the story. Making it work means changing processes, contracts and incentives, and getting departments that have never worked together to collaborate.

A lot has moved on since 2023. Digital product passports are now becoming EU infrastructure, Right to Repair rules apply across the EU, and sustainability reporting has been scaled back. As Christian told us when we asked about republishing, it's no longer only about sustainability, but about resource security, supply chains and the financial case.

✨ In this episode:

• Barry's new introduction on what has changed since 2023, from the EU Digital Product Passport Registry going live to EME's expansion into the Middle East
• How Christian went from working at Shell to founding Excess Materials Exchange, and what keeps him going when progress is slow
• Why Christian takes inspiration from painters like Van Gogh and Rembrandt
• How the resources passport gives materials an identity so they can find a new home
• Why circular economy is an easy sell in theory but hard in practice, from long-term waste contracts to sales teams with no incentive to sell secondary materials
• How legislation like reporting rules, Right to Repair and digital product passports can push companies to act
• What the TULIPS project taught them about building circular airports, one small step at a time

👤 About our guests:

Christian van Maaren is the founder and CEO of Excess Materials Exchange, a digital matching platform for the high-value reuse of materials and waste. Before founding EME, he managed the natural capital and green infrastructure programme for Shell in Houston, and in 2012 he joined Sir Robert Swan on an expedition to Antarctica. Find EME at excessmaterialsexchange.com.

Anne Rademaker is the founder of Rademaker Consulting, based in the Netherlands, where she helps organisations put circular economy principles into practice. She spent five years at EY Advisory, supporting over 25 international clients, and has written a book and various articles on circular economy. Find Rademaker Consulting at rademakerconsulting.com.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

You drop off your engagement ring to be repaired. You get a handwritten paper ticket. No confirmation, no updates, no idea when it's coming back. For something with that much value, it's a stressful experience. And for everyday items, that same friction is often enough to make people skip the repair and buy new instead.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Emily Watts, founder and CEO of Coblr, a company building the digital infrastructure to connect and power the repair economy for the first time.

Emily spent years in corporate operations, was COO of a scheduling startup that sold to Toast, and then did something unusual: she ran her own mail-in repair business for two years, not as the endgame, but to understand the problem from the inside. What she found was an industry running on software from the early 2000s, brands managing repair manually even at scale, and consumer intent dying because the process was just too much hassle.

Her thesis is simple. She compares repair to resale: shopping secondhand used to mean sorting through racks at a charity shop. Technology removed that friction and the market exploded. Emily believes repair is sitting in the same place right now, with the demand already there but held back by a broken experience. Coblr's job is to fix the experience.

✨ In this episode:

• Emily explains why repair is where resale was before technology removed the friction, and why she thinks the same growth is coming
• We hear how she ran her own mail-in repair business for two years to understand the problem before building the software
• Emily describes how Coblr gives repair providers purpose-built software to replace legacy tools and automate the administrative work that costs them at least eight hours a week. For consumers, it's a little like a Domino's Pizza Tracker for your repair: status updates, text notifications, and full transparency
• Barry and Emily discuss how brands can embed repair into customer service, retail, and online channels without building anything in-house
• Emily explains the aligned incentives: brands get loyalty and data, repair providers get consistent revenue, consumers get a modern experience, and items stay out of landfill
• We hear about Sal, Coblr's AI diagnostic tool that can assess damage from a photograph and estimate the cost of a fix
• Emily shares how repair providers in Coblr's network are making 20% more monthly revenue and scaling their teams for the first time

👤 About our guest:

Emily Watts is the founder and CEO of Coblr, a company building the digital infrastructure to connect and power the repair economy. Coblr provides repair businesses with end-to-end software to run their operations, and embeds repair into brands' omni-channel experience so that getting something fixed is as easy as buying new. Before founding Coblr, Emily was COO at Sling, a B2B SaaS scheduling company acquired by Toast, and spent two years running her own mail-in repair business to understand the repair industry from the inside. Find Coblr at coblros.com or on LinkedIn and Instagram at Coblrshop.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

What happens when unwanted laptops and phones become more than just an e-waste problem?

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Elaine Brown, Chief Executive of The Edinburgh Remakery, a social enterprise and charity working at the intersection of technology reuse, repair and community support.

The Remakery takes unwanted technology from businesses, securely wipes and refurbishes it, and gives it a second life wherever possible. But its mission goes beyond keeping electronics out of landfill. The organisation uses circularity to create social value too, supporting people experiencing digital exclusion, creating opportunities to learn repair skills, and providing a space where communities can come together. Earlier this year, The Remakery won a King's Award for Enterprise, the only social enterprise in Scotland to be recognised.

Elaine is candid about the challenges too, including what happens when funding falls away and a growing organisation has to find new ways to sustain itself.

✨ In this episode:

• Elaine explains how The Edinburgh Remakery combines IT reuse, repair and social impact under one roof
• Why repair cafes tackle loneliness as much as landfill, with people opening up over a broken laptop or a sewing machine in ways a forced conversation never achieves
• Why Elaine insists on being on the high street rather than hidden in a warehouse, and what that visibility means for behaviour change
• The challenge of building a financially sustainable model when funding falls off a cliff and turnover doesn't mean profit
• How COVID gave unexpected space to test ideas that became the core of the trading model
• What the next chapter looks like for The Remakery as the organisation finds new ways to grow
• Why she doesn't care how people come to The Remakery, because whatever brings them in, they leave having been part of a circular economy story

👤 About our guest:

Elaine Brown is the Chief Executive of The Edinburgh Remakery, a social enterprise and charity based in Leith, Edinburgh. The Remakery is Scotland's leading social ITAD, refurbishing donated business technology, selling it to fund community programmes, and gifting devices to people facing digital poverty. Under Elaine's leadership, The Remakery won the Queen's Award for Enterprise for Sustainable Development in 2022 and the King's Award for Enterprise in 2026, the only social enterprise in Scotland to receive it. Before joining The Remakery in December 2019, Elaine worked in vocational education and environmental not-for-profits. Find The Remakery at edinburghremakery.org.uk.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

The tailoring workforce in the US has been shrinking for decades. And the ones that remain aren't easy to find or get an appointment with.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Robin Atkinson and Cash Acrey, the husband-and-wife co-founders of Upkept, an online clothing repair platform based in Northwest Arkansas. You mail in clothes you want fixed, they repair them in a centralised facility, and they send them back. Robin says this should be as easy as ordering delivery.

Robin's journey began with a different question: how do you create meaningful sewing jobs in America? Along the way she discovered something unexpected. The people learning these skills weren't excited by repetitive manufacturing. They loved repair, where every garment is different and every project demands creativity and problem-solving.

That insight sits at the heart of Upkept: the technology isn't the product. Repair is the product, and the software exists to reduce friction so the human craft can scale.

✨ In this episode:

• Robin explains why repair creates more fulfilling work than garment manufacturing, and why the workforce she trained took to it more quickly
• Cash shares how AI coding tools helped build Upkept's platform from scratch on a shoestring budget, and why no off-the-shelf solution fit
• Robin and Cash discuss balancing one-of-a-kind craftsmanship with operational scale
• Why Upkept's technology works as a mediation layer between a customer who needs simplicity and a production team that needs detail
• Robin's honest take on turning down the wrong investment to protect the mission, the workforce, and the size of the opportunity
• The vision for brand partnerships and a future where it's embarrassing for a company not to offer a link to repair

👤 About our guests:

Robin Atkinson is the founder and CEO of Upkept, an online apparel repair and alterations platform serving customers across 26 US states from a centralised facility in Northwest Arkansas. After nine years building workforce development programmes in sewn trades, she founded Upkept to create meaningful skilled jobs while making clothing repair affordable and accessible. She describes her mission as getting the unit economics of repair to work in America.

Cash Acrey is the CFO and CTO of Upkept and a finance professor at the University of Arkansas. He leads the company's technology strategy, building custom software from scratch using AI coding tools that simplifies the repair experience for customers while supporting the skilled people carrying out the work.

Find Upkept at upkept.io, or connect with Robin and Cash on LinkedIn.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

Most commercial kitchens have no clear picture of what they are throwing away, when, or why.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Anastasia Dellis, CEO of Orbisk, a platform that uses AI and computer vision to make food waste visible in commercial kitchens. The Orbi monitor sits above a waste bin, captures every item discarded, recognises over 800 ingredients, and feeds it all into a dashboard that tells chefs, GMs, CFOs, and sustainability teams what is happening and what to change first.

Anastasia's path to Orbisk runs through two decades of scaling businesses, from Africa's largest retailer to Gorillas, one of Europe's fastest-growing startups in quick commerce. She describes recognising the intersection of her professional experience with a personal connection to food scarcity she grew up with in South Africa.

What comes through most clearly is her conviction that kitchen technology only works at scale if it demands nothing of the people using it. No training, no buttons, no extra steps. That principle, which Orbisk calls "No Pause Dispose," is not an afterthought; it is the product.

✨ In this episode:

• Anastasia explains how the Orbi monitor works: above the bin computer vision that captures every discard automatically, with no interaction from kitchen staff
• How different stakeholders use the same data differently: a CFO sees margin gains, a chef sees ingredient-level waste patterns, and a sustainability team sees carbon metrics pulled into their auditing environment
• Anastasia's path from growing up in her father's shop in South Africa to corporate retail to scaling Gorillas across nine markets, and how she found purpose alignment at Orbisk
• Why mission alignment matters for the team and investors, even when customers buy purely on the business case
• How Orbisk's AI culinary assistant goes beyond dashboards to offer production, recipe, and training changes tailored to a hotel brand's standards
• The longer-term vision: moving from waste monitoring into forecasting and purchasing to become the intelligence layer inside every kitchen

👤 About our guest:

Anastasia Dellis is the CEO of Orbisk, a Dutch food-tech company using AI-powered computer vision to help commercial kitchens track, reduce, and ultimately eliminate food waste. Before joining Orbisk, Anastasia spent over two decades scaling businesses across retail and tech, including roles at Africa's largest retailer, China's largest retailer, and Gorillas, one of Europe's fastest-growing startups. She studied at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Orbisk operates in over 55 countries and works with brands including Marriott, Accor, Hilton, IHG, and Carnival Cruise Lines. Find Orbisk at orbisk.com, or reach Anastasia on LinkedIn.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

The same handbag. Thirty different platforms. Hundreds of dollars between listings. And no way to know what it's actually worth.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Chris Lucas, founder and CEO of Secondsense, a platform that aggregates luxury resale listings from over 30 vendors, normalises their attributes, and tells consumers what a product is really trading at. Chris describes it as the Google Flights for luxury resale.

Chris's background is unusual for the fashion space. Stanford AI, senior machine learning engineer at Instagram, then Harvard Business School. He built a prototype while still a student, a TikToker put it on her channel, the site crashed overnight, and Chris opened a fundraise the next morning. He didn't wait until the product was ready. He didn't wait until he graduated. He just ran.

What's most striking about the conversation is Chris's view on where value sits now. He argues the modelling layer, the application layer, and the hardware layer are all effectively democratised. Someone can duplicate a website in minutes using tools like Lovable or Claude Code. The only thing that can't be replicated is years of clean, structured, proprietary data and the domain expertise to know what to do with it. For Secondsense, that means knowing that a caviar leather Chanel sells differently from lambskin, or that champagne hardware changes the price, details a layperson would never spot.

✨ In this episode:

• Chris explains why the secondhand luxury market is broken: fragmented supply, opaque pricing, and one-of-one SKU processing that leads to chronic supply-demand mismatch
• We hear the story of the TikTok video that crashed his prototype and the snap decision to fundraise before graduating Harvard
• Chris shares his framework for thinking about the AI stack (data, models, applications, hardware) and why only one of those layers is defensible
• Barry and Chris discuss why domain knowledge matters as much as technical skill, and why hiring people who understand both is a sport
• Chris gives an honest account of Secondsense's sustainability story: it's real, but it's not what's driving his customers' purchasing decisions
• We explore the vision for scaling beyond luxury handbags into any product category that trades inefficiently on the resale market, from liquor and art to wine, electronics, and even equestrian saddlery

👤 About our guest:

Chris Lucas is the founder and CEO of Secondsense, a platform aggregating luxury resale listings from over 30 vendors to bring price transparency and market efficiency to the secondhand luxury market. Before founding Secondsense, Chris studied AI at Stanford, worked as a senior machine learning engineer at Instagram writing content recommendation algorithms, and completed his MBA at Harvard Business School. Chris grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and describes his mission as making the resale market efficient, determining the fair market value of any product in any condition. Find Secondsense at secondsense.co, or reach Chris directly at [email protected].

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

Technology isn't magic. And neither is the bin, even though most of us treat it like one.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Tom Passmore, CIO and co-founder of Dsposal, a company that has spent a decade building technology for the UK waste sector. Tom has a vivid way of describing the core problem: the moment someone decides they don't want something, it's dead to them. All the nostalgia, all the value, gone. It goes to the magic away place.

But what actually happens in that magic away place matters enormously, and the UK has something most countries don't: roughly 10 years of structured public waste data. Dsposal's work is about joining that data together, building tools on top of it, and helping organisations move from simply complying with waste regulations to genuinely understanding what's happening with their waste and why.

Tom is unusually candid about the pace of change. A customer portal his team built sat untouched for eight years before usage suddenly accelerated post-COVID. The data didn't change. The questions did. And that shift, from asking what and where to asking why, is where Tom sees real change beginning.

The conversation also gets into the UK government's new Digital Waste Tracking programme, where Tom plays the role of critical friend, broadly supportive of the direction but direct about the gaps, particularly around who gets to see the data and whether phase two will track waste or just the vehicles carrying it.

✨ In this episode:

• Tom explains why the "magic away place" mindset is the root problem in waste management
• We explore the three public datasets that underpin Dsposal's products and what they reveal when connected
• Tom describes the shift from compliance-driven questions to "why" questions, and what triggered it
• Barry and Tom discuss Digital Waste Tracking: what's working, what's missing, and why the technology is the easy part
• Tom shares what 10 years of building waste tech has taught him about naivety, humility, and behaviour change
• We hear Tom's vision for using data to map every take-back scheme in the country, and his honest assessment of AI readiness in the waste sector

👤 About our guest:

Tom Passmore is the CIO and co-founder of Dsposal, a web platform that has spent 10 years making waste management easier, more transparent, and more compliant for organisations across the UK. Dsposal works with universities, NHS trusts, science parks, local authorities, and small to medium waste management companies, connecting public waste data with tools that help users find legal waste outlets, track compliance, and increasingly drill into the why behind their waste patterns. Tom is an active voice in the UK waste data community, serves as a critical friend to DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking programme, and is passionate about the untapped potential in the UK's public waste datasets.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

Technology isn't magic. But sometimes dropping your spoon in a bowl of soup during a pandemic leads you somewhere extraordinary.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Thierry Sanders, founder of Kolekt, a platform connecting waste collectors, buy-back centres, and recyclers across the Global South. Thierry's background spans fintech, microfinance, and living in developing countries from Ecuador to Pakistan to Indonesia, and Kolekt grew directly out of two weeks spent riding around Bali on a motorbike with informal waste collectors, learning how their world actually works.

What makes Kolekt's story unusual is the order of operations. Thierry didn't arrive with a product looking for a market. He started with cigarettes, lunch, and genuine curiosity, and the technology followed the problems he discovered: collectors wasting half their time searching for materials that weren't there, workers without phones or bank accounts locked out of digital systems, and facial recognition tools that didn't work for the people who needed them most.

The conversation is direct about the harder edges of this work: the fossil fuel industry flooding markets with cheap virgin plastic, governments demanding surveillance data on immigrant workers, and the gap between EPR policy and what actually reaches the people doing the collecting.

✨ In this episode:

• Thierry tells the origin story of Kolekt, from a pandemic soup bowl in Jakarta to 14,000+ waste collector profiles across six countries
• We explore the practical technology challenges of serving users who have no phone, no bank account, and no reliable connectivity
• Thierry explains how Kolekt discovered and worked around racist bias in open-source facial recognition
• Barry and Thierry discuss the economics of informal waste collection and why recycled materials cost more than virgin plastic
• Thierry shares his work advising South Asian governments on EPR legislation and the $100 billion opportunity it represents
• We hear how Kolekt chose to lose contracts rather than hand over user data to governments targeting immigrant collectors

👤 About our guest:

Thierry Sanders is the founder of Kolekt (kolekt.com), a platform that connects waste collectors, buy-back centres, and recyclers across the Global South. With a background in fintech and microfinance across developing countries including Ecuador, Pakistan, and Indonesia, Thierry built Kolekt after spending two weeks with informal waste collectors in Bali during the pandemic, learning how the waste economy works from the ground up. Kolekt now operates in Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, Mozambique, Kenya, and Ghana, with around 14,000 active waste collector profiles and close to 100,000 transactions processed. Thierry also advises governments across South Asia on Extended Producer Responsibility legislation and has developed Kolekt's EPR compliance platform for Mozambique.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

Technology isn't magic. And neither, it turns out, is circular strategy.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O'Kane speaks with Amelia Woodley, a sustainability leader with 25 years of cross-sector experience, and Vin Sharma, a researcher whose doctoral work examined why the social dimension of circular economy so often gets left behind.

Amelia introduces her "logic versus magic" framework: the logic side covers strategy, systems, KPIs, and measurement; the magic side covers the storytelling, brand identity, training, and people-led change that make sustainability mean something inside an organisation. Her argument is that most organisations over-invest in the logic and underinvest in the magic, and that is exactly where circular transformations stall.

Vin's research adds depth to this picture. Across companies at different stages of their circular journey, he found that social value tends to be bolted on rather than built in, and that the organisations making genuine progress were the ones who treated crises as learning events rather than problems to recover from.

The conversation is unusually direct on the financial dimension. Both guests push back on the idea that circular solutions come with a green premium: with good data and whole-life cost thinking, the commercial case can be made. The challenge is building the analytical and organisational muscle to make it properly.

✨ In this episode:

• Vin explains the social blind spot in circular economy thinking and why it is structural
• Amelia introduces the logic-versus-magic framework for sustainable change
• We explore the three stages of circular maturity and what moves organisations between them
• Barry, Amelia, and Vin discuss the role of finance in circular business cases
• We explore how technology and data need to mature together, not in sequence
• Vin and Amelia share what makes them genuinely hopeful about where circularity is heading

👤 About our guests:

Amelia Woodley is a sustainability leader with nearly 25 years of experience designing and embedding sustainability strategies across sectors including construction, rail, infrastructure, nuclear, and retail. She has led major circular economy and net zero transformation programmes and is a strong advocate for making circular thinking accessible and commercially credible inside organisations.

Vin Sharma is a researcher whose doctoral work examined how organisations integrate social value into circular economy transitions. His research identified consistent patterns across companies at different stages of circular maturity, and proposed frameworks for understanding how reactive responses to crises can build long-term capability.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.

Technology isn’t magic. And neither is circularity.

In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Barry O’Kane speaks with Lieke van Kerkhoven, co-founder of Green Pulse.

Lieke explains how Green Pulse is helping hospitals extend the life of medical equipment by connecting them with a global network of buyers. The platform combines logistics, marketplace dynamics, and technology to make reuse viable in a complex and highly regulated environment, an example of what we mean by Exploring circular tech: technology isn’t magic, where technology plays a role, but only as part of a much bigger operational and human system.

They discuss the practical realities of building a circular business, from managing operations and growth to creating trust between buyers and sellers. The conversation also explores a broader idea: how businesses can move beyond treating sustainability as an add-on and instead integrate it into their core commercial model.

The episode highlights Lieke’s concept of “integrative business”, the role of AI in reshaping work, and the importance of aligning incentives across the value chain.

✨ In this episode:

• Lieke explains how Green Pulse started and how it works
• We explore the challenges of running a circular marketplace
• Lieke shares insights into the global demand for reused medical equipment
• We discuss why donation is not always the best solution
• Barry and Lieke explore the realities of scaling a startup
• Lieke explains how AI supports operational efficiency
• We discuss aligning commercial and circular incentives
• We explore the gap between personal and professional values
• Lieke shares her vision for the future of Green Pulse

👤 About our guest:

Lieke van Kerkhoven is the co-founder of Green Pulse, a platform focused on the reuse of medical equipment.

She has a background in medicine and has spent years working at the intersection of healthcare, sustainability, and the circular economy. Through Green Pulse, she is helping hospitals recover value from unused equipment while making it accessible to buyers around the world.

Lieke is particularly interested in what she calls “integrative business”, bringing together commercial and sustainability thinking into a single, aligned model. Her work focuses on reducing friction, building trust, and creating systems where circularity becomes a natural outcome of doing business.

🌍 About HappyPorch

HappyPorch is a purpose-driven software engineering consultancy focused on the circular economy.

Learn more: https://www.happyporch.com

💌 Subscribe to HappyPorch Circular News

HappyPorch Circular News is our monthly newsletter for people working in and around the circular economy and technology.

Subscribe at:

https://www.happyporch.com/newsletter/

▶️ Listen and subscribe

Stream this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Deezer, iHeart, Pocket Casts — or wherever you get your podcasts..

Visit https://www.happyporchradio.com to explore more episodes.