Sophie Thomas has a CV that can genuinely be described as intriguing. As one website put it, she is an ‘unusual mix of campaigner, practising designer and chartered waste manager’. She has been at the forefront of the debate about sustainable design for the best part of 30 years and, in 2025, was awarded an OBE for her tireless work. 

Among other things, she founded the pioneering (but now defunct) communications consultancy Thomas.Matthews in 1997 and led the the influential Great Recovery Project in 2012. Currently, she wears a number of (always sustainable) hats… although her career is about to take another turn. 

In this episode we talk about: picking up a gong from the Palace; being an untidy worker; having lots of jobs; how her interest in sustainability and waste began; working on the Earth Centre and why it wasn’t a failure; a life-changing trip to a recycling centre in the Netherlands; taking a thousand designers to rubbish dumps across the country; her obsession with the toothbrush; collaborating with the likes of glassblower Louis Thompson and designer Ella Doran; her feelings of guilt and her desire to create; being a ‘graphic activist’; starting her career at The Body Shop; and why ink is her future. 

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