Interview with Miranda Beckett, Fashion Project Manager, Ellen Macarthur Foundation

Miranda, can you start by introducing yourself and your role at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and what the Foundation’s current priorities are within the fashion sector?

Hello, my name is Miranda Beckett, and I'm a Project Manager in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Retail Mission. Here, I work with businesses, policymakers and NGOs to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.

Today, nearly the entire global economy operates under the same model – we take resources from the ground, to make products and materials and then, after an incredibly short amount of time, we get rid of them. It’s a take-make-waste, linear system. The circular economy provides a better alternative, based on three principles: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials and regenerate nature.

Day to day, I work on The Fashion ReModel, a project designed to demonstrate that circular business models can scale by getting to the heart of a business — its revenue. The project works with leading brands to show that we can make the economics work today, while targeting key intervention points to improve commercial viability in the future.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has played a huge role in shaping how the industry understands circularity. How has the conversation around circular fashion evolved since you first started working in this space?

Fashion is an iconic example of a broken linear system. It needs radical transformation of the way products are designed, made, and used. It’s no secret that this is a really complex challenge, one that no organisation can solve alone. If we work collaboratively across the system, there are three drivers to help us get there:

• Circular design
• Increased collection and sorting infrastructure,
• And the uptake of circular business models such as rental, resale, repair and remaking.

To-date, most business and policy efforts have focussed on circular product design and post consumer recycling. These are usually small pilot collections aimed at designing out waste. Whilst these are essential, and must continue at pace and scale, to achieve a circular economy for fashion, these must be matched by a similar level of investment and ambition across the full range of solutions, including circular business models – how do businesses deliver their redesigned products to customers and ensure these products are kept in use?

We’re seeing a surge of circular schemes - from resale to take-back schemes- but scaling them remains difficult. From your experience, what separates the initiatives that truly take off from those that stall?

Circular business models that don’t seem to take off tend to lack a strategic, long-term roadmap for building the model, running operations and capturing value effectively. These pitfalls can be divided into four main categories:

• Early-stage decisions that lack a long-term approach and are misaligned with the wider business strategy, thus inhibiting the longevity and strength of organisational support when the moment comes to scale.
• The selection of ineffective combinations of business model, customer experience and product mixes for an organisation’s context, thus limiting operational success and revenue potential.
• Narratives that don’t convey the full economic rationale of the business model, thus hindering their ability to garner support from internal stakeholders and gain access to the resources needed for scaling these initiatives.
• The exclusion of necessary wider organisational functions or appropriate external partners from the project’s outset, reducing the ability of these models to be incorporated into the mainstream  business offering further down the line.

From our research, we know that these models can scale across diverse organisational structures – the key is designing approaches that fit the specific business context and address the common pitfalls. Additionally, collective business action is needed to accelerate innovation and de-risk large infrastructure investment. Supply chains have been optimised for one way linear production and it’s only by working together with industry and policy that we can identify shared barriers to overcome such as finance, climate impact evidence, marketing and policy.

There’s still confusion between recycling and circularity. How can brands reframe their approach so they’re designing systems in a radical way?

The circular economy is about so much more than recycling. Recycling is an end of life solution and should be considered as the last resort for a product. In a circular economy, brands design waste out of their processes from the beginning.

That means redesigning products so that they are both physically and emotionally durable, and designing business models like resale, repair, rental and remaking so that products are kept in use for longer. It also means designing products so that once they do reach end of life, they can be easily recycled due to their material composition and ease of disassembly.

Collaboration is at the heart of circular transformation. What examples have inspired you of brands that are genuinely embracing collaboration?

We touched on The Fashion ReModel earlier, but this project has demonstrated the importance of aligning behind shared guidelines and common definitions. Collaboration can really help move businesses from asking “What do we do?”, to “How do we get there?” and makes it easier to focus on shared barriers.

I’d suggest reading the insights from the first 13 brands and retailers to see some inspiring examples of how they have begun scaling circular business models within their business.

Many sustainability professionals working inside big corporations want to drive change but struggle with inertia. What advice would you give them on creating momentum internally?

My dream is to get to a world where the circular economy is embedded in every role in the organisation, not just the sustainability teams. Co-ownership across the business, especially among internal finance stakeholders, is critical to articulating holistic financial value and ensuring success.

Through our work in the circular business models space, we have found that to truly maximise impact, sustainability professionals should:

• Engage your finance team as a priority
• Designate a lead for the circular business model outside of the sustainability team
• Establish cross-functional steering groups
• Secure C-Suite buy-in
• Harness the expertise of other teams

What was the moment, project, or conversation that first made YOU realise the circular economy could actually transform fashion?

For me something clicked when we created The Fashion ReModel, we were asking brands to sign up with an ambition on a percentage of their overall revenue from circular business models. No easy task!

13 leading brands and retailers stepped forward, representing meaningful change for the industry. Many had to get buy-in from C-suite or their board and whilst there are still challenges, these organisations are signalling the commitment to transform their business – and begin to make money without making new clothes.

Finally -when you think about the next five years, what gives you optimism that the industry can move from intent to real, systems-level transformation?

Businesses are already changing. Clothing resale businesses are seeing enormous growth and secondhand retailers are staging major runway shows. Established food brands are remaking their food to be better for people and planet. Consumer electronics companies are recapturing value by promoting refurbished products over new. The market is moving, while policy is starting to support implementation at scale.

Want to hear more from Miranda? She'll be at Source Fashion on Jan 13th - 15th, get your ticket here!