The Selling Circular Podcast

Hosted by Garr Punnett and Sabira Lakhani

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Aug 2026

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About the show

Sabira & Garr discuss trending circular economy topics, joined by circular economy leaders to share best practices, growth tactics and the future of the movement.

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60 recent

September 1, 20261 hr 2 min

The Food Waste We Never See: Inside a De-Packaging & Recycling Facility

Todd Wilson spent ten years trying to convince someone to fund a machine that smacks food out of its packaging. Banks passed. He built it anyway in Michigan, a state with one of the lowest landfill surcharges in the country and no organics mandate to lean on. In this conversation with Garr Punnett and Sabira Lakhani, Todd walks through the economics of pre-consumer food waste: where sealed, unsold product actually comes from, who takes it once it's separated, and why the machine was never the hard part. It's an unusually candid look at the capital, the partnerships, and the smell involved in standing between a grocer and a landfill.

August 12, 20261 hr 7 min

Achieving Circular Success With Corporate Collaboration Not Competition

Dr. Phil Brown spent four years at TU Delft researching how companies collaborate to go circular, then joined a company built on the premise that mostly they don't. In this conversation with Garr Punnett and Sabira Lakhani, he traces the line from a master's project recovering plastics out of waste electronics to running sustainable innovation at Circularise and argues that the data layer everyone is now racing to build is step one, not the destination. The conversation covers who actually owns product data, why proof-of-concept paralysis is the real bottleneck, what has to be true for capital markets to fund recovery infrastructure, and which people you need in the room for a circular pilot to survive. It is a candid look at the unsexy plumbing of the circular economy from someone who has studied it academically and had to sell it commercially.

August 4, 202652 min

Hyper-Authenticity & Stories Sell Circular Economy Not Data

Vojta Vosecký became LinkedIn's most-followed green creator not by sharing better data, but by abandoning it. In this conversation, the environmental engineer and founder of The Circular Economist explains how he learned — the hard way, in front of deflating workshop rooms — that fear and charts lose people, and story wins them. He and Garr dig into how to actually sell the circular economy: the 30-second analogy that won over a global CEO, why "recycling is the worst of your good options," where the real B2B opportunity hides, and why authenticity has become a competitive advantage in the age of AI slop. It's a masterclass in communication for anyone who knows their cause matters but can't get the room to care.

July 1, 202651 min

The Icon For Reuse Is Here

Amy Larkin has spent her career proving that the people who seem least likely to cooperate can solve enormous problems together. A former Greenpeace Solutions Director turned founder of PR3, The Global Alliance to Advance Reuse, she joins Garr Punnett to make the case that recycling was never going to fix our packaging and plastic crisis — and that reuse, done at scale and built on shared standards, is the solution hiding in plain sight. Along the way she shares how a coalition of corporate "enemies" helped phase a potent greenhouse gas into a global treaty, why she calls herself a "radical collaborator," and what it took to launch the world's first standards-backed symbol for reuse. It's a conversation about defying the odds, the business case for reuse, and the human connection that makes systems change actually happen.

June 23, 2026Episode 8055 min

The Messy Middle of Fashion's Circular Economy

Amelia Eleiter co-founded Debrand in 2008, long before "circularity" was a buzzword, and has spent nearly two decades building the reverse-logistics infrastructure that sits in the "messy middle" of textile circularity with the sorting, identification, and traceability work that happens after a garment is returned, damaged, or overproduced. In this conversation Amelia walks Garr & Sabira through how that hidden layer actually functions, why recycling and circularity aren't the same thing, and how regulation and strategic investment are reshaping the economics of reuse. It's an wonderfully candid look at an industry from someone who refuses to oversell it.

June 17, 202651 min

Do Circular Economy Deals Die at Big Companies?

Gary Lewis is the co-founder and CEO of Resourcify, Europe's leading digital waste-management and circularity platform, which he founded in Hamburg in 2015 after a stint in the cruise-ship industry exposed him to the scale of the waste problem. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he's focused on making recycling and recovery economically obvious for large enterprises. He told listeners the best way to reach him is LinkedIn — and noted Resourcify is hiring (product and sales, including a future US Country Manager role).

June 9, 2026Episode 7945 min

Is Your Recycling Failing & What To Do About It

Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli and Laura Rosenshine, co-founders of WATS, join Garr and co-host Sabira to make the case that commercial waste is the last unmetered utility — and what happens when you finally turn the lights on in the back of the house. The conversation moves from the broken trust between tenants and janitorial teams, to why diversion rate may be the wrong scoreboard, to the looming wave of packaging regulation. It's a practitioner's-eye view of an industry that hasn't fundamentally changed in decades and is now being forced to. If you manage waste for a building, a portfolio, or a brand, this one reframes the whole problem.

May 5, 2026Episode 7747 min

How Waste Workers in India Are Getting Mortgages Through Plastic Credits & EPR Compliance

Svanika Balasubramanian, Co-Founder and CEO of rePurpose Global, joins Garr and Sabira for a deep dive into the economics of plastic credits, the real-world impact of EPR legislation hitting U.S. companies, and how rePurpose evolved from a plastic credit pioneer into a three-vertical platform covering software compliance, downstream supply chain operations, and PCR feedstock. The conversation gets personal when Svanika shares what gives her hope: women in Kerala, India, gaining formal employment, bank accounts, and eventually mortgages through rePurpose's waste collection programs.

April 28, 2026Episode 761 hr 2 min

Circular Economy's Best Pitch Isn't Sustainability

Garry Cooper, neuroscientist-turned-CEO of Rheaply, joins Garr Punnett for an conversation about where the circular economy actually stands in 2026. They dig into why "sustainability" as a pitch is losing ground, why inflation and EPR compliance might finally be the acute pain the sector needs, and the brutal operational reality of selling circular solutions to budget-constrained middle managers. It's a candid conversation between two operators who've been doing this long enough to tell the difference between the narrative and the spreadsheet.

April 20, 2026Episode 7555 min

The Resale Brick-and-Mortar Market Is Underserved & How Domain Expertise Will Beat The SaaSpocalypse

Nic Esposito returns to Selling Circular for a candid follow-up conversation about what happened after he paused Unless Kids — his direct-to-consumer toy resale brand — to focus entirely on Circa OS, the inventory and operations platform his team was building underneath it. We talk about why he made the call, what it's like selling B2B after running D2C, why 25,000 independent resale shops in the US are underserved by current retail tech, and what founders get wrong about pivots, customer feedback, and the "SaaSpocalypse." This one is for founders, resale operators, and anyone watching circular retail infrastructure evolve in real time.