We used to have at least ambitions that were making us front runners. It didn’t mean that we were the most circular country, and we’re still not the most circular country. We’re one of the least circular countries, but we we have very good infrastructure, and we talk a lot about how good we are, but we’re not actually very good.

You’re listening to A Climate Change, this is Matt Matern, your host, and I’ve got a great guest on the program, Elin Bergman. She is the executive director of cradle net Sweden. She’s also co founder of the Nordic circular hotspot, Senior Advisor at success Stockholm University, and has an amazing career doing work in the environmental space and in sustainability and circularity, and really excited to have a conversation with her. Welcome, Elin.

Thank you so much.

So tell us a little bit about kind of your pathway into the environmental movement, and what kind of got you started?

Oh, that was depends really how I answer this question. Sometimes I say it’s because my mother, she was really an environmentalist at heart. Now is growing up, but coming into, you know, my career, it’s, well, first of all, I was very interested in environmental issues from the get go, but then I started my career in the games, computer games and movie industry.

And I kind of started in communication and marketing and things, but then after a while, I saw the movie and inconvenient truths with Al Gore, and that kind of made me really want to do a career out of working in environment and climate. So that made me a shift. I started studying environmental things at night, and then I got into the sustainability sector, and from there, I kind of ended up where I am now. So it was a bit of a journey, but I’m very happy to be where I am now.

Well, yeah, it’s It’s always fascinating to hear how people kind of access entry into this movement. And I think telling the story for other people gives access to them to say, oh, okay, I can step in and to this from a gaming background or wherever I might be, there is an access point. So tell us a little bit about cradle net Sweden and the work that you’re doing there.

Well, so CradleNet is one of the oldest Circular Economy networks in the world. We started already in 2009 a lot of people think that I started it. I did not, but I got involved in 2014 and I’ve been running it for 11 years now. And it’s basically a network where we focusing mostly on business transformation. So we have about 150 companies that we teach about circular economy.

We have unique meetings with our members every single Friday, who has something called circular Fridays, where we teach them the latest news about circular economy, new EU Lake regulation, or new reports or tools coming out. We also have a guest speaker every week, where, where they Well, they also get a lot of the latest information that they need. And we also write reports, we do projects, we try to influence policy and so on, everything in order to transition into circular economy faster.

So yeah, it’s about spreading the news and the insights, but the benefits of circular economy, and not only to the members, but to everybody that wants to listen basically,

Well, that’s great. I can see the value in focusing in on it every single week, because it’s so easy to lose focus and to shift off into the 1000s of other avenues that we are bombarded with every day. So that’s super important. I’m curious as to how the Swedish government has supported circularity in the economy.

Well, it depends on which government really, because we have a new government now. It’s not super new anymore, but it’s not very ambitious. We had a former government that made a circular economy strategy and roadmap, and they even appointed a delegation for circular economy that was going to help the government to be ambitious. But then we got a new government in place, and they kind of forgot that we have a strategy for circular economy and a roadmap.

You hear them doing some outreach, sometimes about, oh, we’re going to do something new about this. And then they just lower their wishes, basically. So I’m trying to really make sure they are not forgetting about it. I keep reminding them, and I also try to influence them to not to not only make the targets and goals set in the strategies and road maps, but also raise the ambitions. We don’t even have a deadline for when we’re going to have circular economy in place in Sweden, like they do in Finland, in the Nordics, or in the Netherlands and many of the other European countries.

So that’s what I want want us to do, and I want us to be a front runner again. Because we used to have at least ambitions that were making us front runners. It didn’t mean that we were the most. Circular country, and we’re still not the most circular country. We’re one of the least circular countries, but we we have very good infrastructure, and we talk a lot about how good we are, but we’re not actually very good.

What kind of separates the good from the great here in the circular economy space? Say, who are the front runners and what makes them the front runners?

Well, that’s also kind of a tricky question to answer, because it depends on how you calculate and what you’re looking at. So if you look at the material flows, for instance, there’s a gap report, a global Gap Report, made by Circular Economy consultancy in the Netherlands every year, and they are looking at all the material flows on the planet, and they’re saying that, Oh, we are only 7.2% circular now, globally, everybody.

And then they can. You can also make your own gap reports for each country. So we actually made some in the Nordics. So you can think, because we have the, well, we’ve been communicating that we’re so good, but when you look at the average in the Nordics, I mean, for instance, Sweden is only 3.4% circulars. We’re below the global average, even though we have all this fantastic infrastructure. And then we if you look at Norway, they’re a big extracting of oil nation.

They’re only 2.8% circular. So we are actually in the Nordics, you know, below the global average. So that’s one way to measure it. Another way to measure it is how far the business sector had come and we just cradle that just made a fantastic report before Christmas where we for the first time, looked at all the companies on the Nordic stock markets, the small, mid size and large companies, where we asked them, Do you have a circular economy strategy in place, and what does it look like?

And now it’s 86% of all the companies that has included circular economy in their business strategies. So that’s amazing. When we did that same report in Sweden, 2018 and 2021 it was only 30% so it’s a big difference. You can really see the shift. But like I said, it doesn’t mean that the Nordics are the most circular countries. We’re still very big extracting countries, and we are very consuming. I think we’re the top 20 least worst countries over consuming according to the global global footprint networks, country overshoot days. So yeah, it really depends what you’re talking about.

Well, it’s a fascinating question to be asking. And quite frankly, after having interviewed lots of people, I don’t think anybody has put in concrete terms of what sustainability and circularity looks like in terms of extracting and consuming. And tell us a little bit more about the measurements of mean extracting, say, oil, that seems like kind of an easy one, because the companies tell you, Hey, we extracted X amount of barrels of oil or something. But and mining companies similarly, what are the tricky ones to measure?

Well, actually, mining is interesting because Sweden is a big mining country, and we have been mining so much for the last hundreds of years. So the interesting thing is, when you mine something, you mine steel or copper, you just mine one material, right? So one of the biggest waste materials we have in Sweden is actually mining waste. We don’t even calculate in that into the statistics of waste in Sweden. That’s, I don’t know. They just put it on somewhere on the side, even though it’s more than 150 million tons of waste.

So that’s a huge part of the waste we have. And it’s also interesting, like it really depends on what you calculate and what you’re after, but I would say mining is a big problem. We looked at the four big sectors that are the least circular ones, and mining is one of them. We have construction, we have mobility, and we have food. But then the also, you have the, you know, clothing industry, you know, fashion and everything. And yeah, there are many sectors that should be more circular, of course, and packaging is a big problem. And so, yeah.

Well, I guess I had a guest on recently, and he was talking about from NASA, and he was talking about, well, the kind of society that is likely to create, you know, to go into intergalactic travel would be one that is completely circular, that wastes nothing, that has essentially no footprint.

Yeah, and that is really what we should be shooting for, because that is sustainability that for generations like in order for us to generate that kind of high level technology, we have to create a circular economy.

So what are the what are some of the success stories that you’re seeing out there that give you some hope for for our future here, it should seem strange to see this in the middle of you know, we have this tariff, you know, wars and resources going on right now, which is interesting, because we had those type of wars before, and every time we if someone needs more or wants more or try to take more than their fair share, they will always turn into wars somehow. I mean actual wars, and we refuse to learn from our mistakes and learn from history.

So I think it’s so interesting to. Be where we are and still be positive, but I am kind of positive, because now we’re finally starting to talk about, like, okay, maybe we should look at the resources we have in our own regions and maybe do the most of those instead. Because now we’ve been wasting for such a long time, and now we’re finally talking in the European Union, for instance, above, oh, maybe we should map what kind of resources we have internally and do the best of them.

Maybe we should recycle more instead of just importing things from the US, for instance, because now it’s too expensive. So sometimes crisis is actually good in order to make us more sustainable. And I think it’s a great likeness to like, Okay, if we, if we go to Mars, we should be super circular. Of course, you should, even if you go on a ship to Mars, I mean, you need to recirculate all the water, all the nutrients, back into the system, so you can keep growing food, so you can have fresh produce. And, of course, you can’t fill the whole ship with the pee and poo.

You need to do something with it, right? So, I mean, it’s, it’s, it just makes sense. And if we just, I mean, it’s 2525 now you think we, we should be focusing more on flying cars and, you know, really cool robotics. And yes, we, of course, we have AI and we have some robots. But, I mean, why are we still pumping up oil in the middle of a climate crisis where houses are on fire, and people are drowning in floods and storms, and, you know, we should be focusing on the more important things.

But, yeah, we are where we are right now and but I think for me, it’s a lot of reason to be positive, even though, I mean, this is, I’m not new in this. I think this is my third kind of crisis where people forget about sustainability, and I’ve been there and it goes down and it goes up again. So it’s like we forget, and then we’re focusing on other things, and then we realize that maybe it’s good to have a planet that’s habitable in the end.

Well, I hope that enough of us hold the space for habitable planet that we keep this conversation going. And I do think that you’re right in that, even though this is a crisis, it does allow people to start thinking about things differently.

And I thought the first Trump administration, you know, in one respect, the silver lining was it woke a lot of people up who were lethargic, and said, Hey, we need to start doing things at a state level, at a local level, environmentally, and some amazing things, like out here in California to phase out the gas powered cars by 2035 and then a bunch of other states followed, who also are following that example, who are over 50% of the US market. So 50% of the US market is on trajectory to have, you know, no internal combustion cars at 2035 that’s really Trump in his first term, because it was reaction to him, yeah.

And also now looking at some specific electric car company, I think. And that’s another thing that makes me positive, because now we can see consumer power is actually working. Before a lot of people all over the world said, it doesn’t matter what I do, you know what I doesn’t matter if I, you know, go and vote whatever.

But now people stop buying a certain electric car, and you can see consumer power is actually working. If someone is is not being a good citizen, then you can actually vote them out of power, even if it’s a, you know, publicly listed company, or, you know, company on the stock market. And I think that’s also a valuable lesson, like, you need to be a good citizen and run a company, otherwise we will not buy your things. Yeah,

I think that’s an incredibly powerful lesson. And and a lot of people in the environmental movement talk about, hey, we really need to be focused on governmental shifts and making these systemic shifts of saying, hey, you know, say, stop producing internal combustion engines by 2035 that only can be done by the government.

And I get that, but I also get that, hey, we can do this thing about stopping buying certain products and tell the owners of these companies, no mas. You know, we’re not doing it anymore. And as Cesar Chavez said, every dollar we spend is a vote that we have. So we can vote with our pocketbooks every single day. So tell us, how should we be voting even.

Well, I think, like the example that I just told you, I think is a great example. But I mean, I’m not against elected cars. I actually had stocks in that company that I sold two years ago, when I saw it was like going in this direction. But I think, I mean, now people, if they can see that it does make a difference what you buy and what you don’t buy. I think that will hopefully make a big change. And now, in all over the world, second hand is, especially for clothing, is, I mean, it’s on the up immensely.

I mean, it’s not in I think it quadrupled in just a few years. And in Sweden. Is going insane. I mean, they’re closing new fresh, you know, fashion stores and new second hand stores are popping up everywhere. And it’s also kind of like people understanding like they don’t want the super fast, bad quality fashion that just makes you look exactly the same like everybody else.

They want to be individualists, and they want quality, and they want things that last for generations and and they things that they have a relationship with. And I think that that’s also very powerful, but what I’m afraid of is that it’s going to be a trend that’s going to disappear again, and then we’re going to go into super duper fast fashion. So I I’m trying to work to make things stick and become the new norm. That’s what I’m working for.

Well, certainly regarding the fast fashion angle, just the quality of the garment that we put on our skin, that the fast fashion stuff is mostly garbage and and we’re, you know, affected by wearing polyesters and oils and chemicals on our skin all day long, it’s like it’s not healthy, so just a bad health move. So hopefully people’s consciousness will raise to the point where they realize, hey, this is a bad health choice, not only a bad environmental choice.

Yeah, and I really like that, because we need to also start thinking more holistically, because Health and Environment actually goes hand in hand. And one thing that all the politicians are very much like concerned about right now is that we’re the birth rate is going down, and they’re just trying to kind of force us into, not so much in Europe, but maybe on your part of the planet, to force people to give birth and create families.

But actually, the sperm count of men is going down exponentially as well, because we have chemicals cocktails all over in their societies, and we’re breathing in pollution and things. I mean, yes, of course they can force us, but if it’s the nature is saying, no, they need to do something for the environment in the end, otherwise, we will not reproduce, even if they want us to, or try to force us right and, and a lot of countries, I mean, even including Sweden, or encourage people to have kids, because, like in Sweden, hey, you get a year off, and they pay you, and all that kind of stuff, you know.

And you know, certainly that’s a more humane way of dealing with the problem than kind of, you know, other other ways. But you know, they’re finding that even with those kinds of incentives, lots of women are saying, No, I don’t or and men as well saying, hey, no, I’m not interested in this process, particularly with governments that are not, you know, ones that they want their kids to live in, or environments that they feel like are safe and healthy for their children.

Yeah, but I think that’s it. I think that’s an over going trend, because I think this as when or if there will be world peace again and prosperity and people feel we have economies to actually raise children in a safe environment where we actually take care of the climate crisis, people will start giving birth again, and if the politicians don’t understand that, I mean now it feels like a very uncertain future.

I don’t want to bring kids into this. So of course, if they stabilize things, if we get rid of corruption and people buying their places in governments, if there’s billionaires and things that will make us feel safer. So they should really listen to the population.

You think, also don’t think it’s such a terrible thing to have a few less people in on the planet, like we survived when I was a kid with 4 billion people or something. Now we have eight. I mean, 4 billion people wasn’t such a bad thing. Nobody was saying, Oh, we we have too few people here. Now, in fact, there were a lot of people saying, Hey, we have too many at 4 billion.

So, you know, having for smaller families is more sustainable. It’s it’s not a bad thing. It’s probably less stress on the planet to have less less people. I mean, eventually there’ll be some, you know, modulation of that, if necessary. But it isn’t inherently bad to have less humans on the planet?

Exactly. And actually, it kind of usually takes care of itself, because once you reach a certain amount of development. Like Japan, for instance, they don’t want to get more children so much. So it’s more like if we just get a lot of countries out of poverty, it will kind of even itself out, or even go down.

So what’s happening in Finland that you think is exciting and worth following?

Well, I would love to say it’s still like that in Finland. But they also have a new government now. So the ambition has gone down there a bit too. But still we when we did this report, the Nordic circular outlook report, before Christmas, we can still see that Finland is ahead of the Nordic countries, and that’s probably like a part of that. They had really good ambitions before.

So they. Still ahead of us, but if they still have, if they now have a bad government, then lowers the ambitions. Maybe we will catch up, but in the wrong direction. We would love to catch up with them, instead of them lowering to our emissions. So, yeah.

Right. Unfortunately, the war in Ukraine has has refocused a lot of people’s attention and a lot of dollars into, you know, combating that which I understand and it is, you know, certainly don’t want to let Russia just invade other countries. But what do we do in in the face of of that, to keep sustainability at, you know, front and center?

Well, actually, like I said before, I think that the worst has actually made a lot of countries in Europe much more security focused. But with security focus also comes with, oh, maybe are we prepared if there is a war like for Sweden, for instance, we only, we produce, like, 30% of the food we eat, we import everything. So now we start to look at, oh, maybe we should be able to, first of all, have a lot of food storage. If there’s a war coming.

We’re way up in a cold country in the Nordics. We can’t, as it is right now, grow all the food we need. So we need to start preparing. We need to start, you know, put food into storage, but also start growing more food within the country. So this has been a big learning, and we really need to step up, because we knew about this before. You know, we had Second World War, we had a lot of storage.

We had a lot of, you know, bomb shelters and things, and we need to start kind of digging those up again, because now it’s been turned into, I don’t know, cellars and basements and storage. So it’s, it’s now, it’s a totally new preparedness. And I think that’s going on in all the all of the countries in Europe, especially the ones bordering to Ukraine or Russia.

I understand that Holland probably has a much better growing season than Sweden, but it’s amazing what they can grow in all those greenhouses. Is that, is that possible in Sweden, or is?

Oh, yeah. I mean, Holland, the Netherlands, are not so much better in climate when it, you know, compared to us. The thing with them is, like they have so little land and so much people, it’s so crowded, so they have to do the most of the land they have.

And I mean, some, in some ways, it’s not very good to pave things and then put greenhouses on and then there are also been, they’ve been warming them with natural gas, which is not a natural gas, it’s actually oil, fossil gas. But so, but still, they’re the second world largest food producer on the planet, this little, little country. It’s amazing. At the same time I work mostly in Spain in the winter.

That’s like the the second biggest, like greenhouse of producing food for Europe. But they have no efficiency, and they have working the land for such a long time that the oil, the top soil is burned out or flushed into the Mediterranean. And now, when it’s climate change, a lot of big rain storms are coming, which is also, I mean, it’s a disaster.

So now they’re starting to think maybe we should regenerate the soil and try to make the topsoil come back so we can actually keep growing food and export it to the rest of Europe. And also, I mean, they need food themselves, of course, but I think we can learn a lot from from how efficient the Netherlands have been, and also in Sweden.

In Sweden, we have a lot of American companies, especially Facebook and Amazons and all of those, because we have the cold climate, so they, if they have enormous servers standing and generating heat, we can use that excess Heat to actually grow food, and we cool the servers with our cold climate, but we can use the excess heat for food production, absolutely. And we need to start thinking in symbiosis and ecosystems together with a lot of different actors in the food chain, absolutely.

Well, let’s, let’s shift a little bit. You talked about some of these mag seven companies, you know, like Google and Facebook and meta, I mean, Tesla and so and so forth. You know, isn’t that where the money shot is in terms of really making a difference? Because those seven con and those seven stocks alone probably equal the GNP of more than any country other than China and the US. So this is where you know, if we’re going to show sustainability works, this is where it’s going to happen. And what are those companies doing, and where do you see that going?

Actually, I was sitting in a round table discussion with all of them, not Tesla, but I had Tesla at my events before we have a political week in Sweden and Alma Dolan, it’s called where we can sit with business leaders and politicians and even ministers and things and just discuss future problems and how to solve them. And all of them were talking about circularity is like, it’s a top priority, especially now.

I mean, this was before the trade wars were going on, but there were still very. Conscious and aware that, okay, there’s going to be a problem. We will run our resources eventually. I mean, yes, we have a lot of resources, and probably we can do a lot of innovation to I mean, if copper runs out, maybe we can use some other type of material, or mineral or metal or whatever, but it costs a lot if we’re going to shift to other types of materials. And at the same time, the prices of everything is going up.

So now it starts to make business sense to actually be resource efficient. And in Sweden and in my network, I have five of the largest circular IT companies that are very profitable. Is one of the most profitable sectors when it comes to circularity because of the resource prices. So they’re now parking up with Samsung and apples and all of them. Because of this problem, they need to source materials from somewhere. And we’ve been throwing away, you know, it technology, and throwing and dumping it in Africa.

So now it’s like, oh, maybe there’s more gold in Africa now in those electronic waste dumps than it is when we mine things. So maybe we should mine that. And these companies, of course, are taking the phones. They’re selling new phones, but then they’re taking them back, refurbish them, sell them again and again and again and again. What if the apples and the Samsung would have realized this from the beginning? T

hey would have done it now. They they’re using other, you know, third party companies that to do this for them. They will probably start tapping into this market themselves eventually, or by these companies. But yeah, so they’re, they’re really looking into this, and I think it’s very important, of course, to work together with these companies.

That is a great story, because I heard that making one of these, these phones, takes as much energy as making a refrigerator. So it is an enormous amount of energy that goes into making one of these. And I guess the question is, isn’t the solution buying less of them? Which is never kind of the answer that an Apple wants to hear is buy fewer phones. They want to sell more and more and more phones.

Well, Apple actually have a circular economy strategy, where they talked about this. It’s like, actually, if you sell a phone that lasts for generations, like you sell an iPhone. And honestly, if you look at the hardware development, it’s really slowing down.

What’s it’s fast is the apps, and, you know, the software developments too. So what if you you produce and sell an iPhone that will actually gain value, that it will be on the antiques roadshow? What will that be? Look look like? I mean, you wouldn’t throw away a Rolex watch, right? That’s supposed to be an investment that you give to your son or your daughter, whatever it’s, what? If the phone were designed like that to actually gain value, but then you need to design it in a totally different way, and Apple will have a totally different relationship to the customer if they own something for a lifetime, right?

So I think that’s a very interesting thought experiment, because they haven’t really thought right now, they’re talking about modularity, like, okay, maybe if the camera dies, you can change the camera module, or if the battery goes bad. Now, with European, you know, repair right to repair movement regulation, you’re supposed to be able to, you know, take out your own battery.

But that also takes a lot of it kind of comes with a lot of problems, though, because if you go modular, usually it’s more technically advanced, and also you need to have usually use more resources. It’s going to be more expensive for the customer. So then we have to give the customer something that actually is better.

So if it lasts longer, if the batteries last longer, you don’t have to charge this as much. I mean, there’s a lot of things that you if you do one thing, you have to also do the other thing, and you need to really, you know, talk and educate to the customer why it’s better. And that’s a bit of a problem right now. And I think a lot of companies, or I know a lot of companies, because I just did this Nordic circular design program, are asking for, like, how do we go from selling a product to selling a service instead?

So iPhone as a service, or Samsungs or whatever, I think it’s the next step, because ownership is, I mean, comes with a lot of problems as well. And usually you just use a smartphone 18 months, and then you throw it away or sell it on secondhand market or whatever you do and buy a new one.

Yeah, that’s a great conversation to be having is, how do we keep things rather than throw them away? And so I had a guest on the program a couple times, Joshua spotic. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him or, you know, he’s, he’s written about sustainability a fair amount, and, you know, but he’s, he’s something of a minimalist and lives in an apartment in New York City, off the grid, no electricity, and has its own solar panel. Is that the future of sustainability, or is sustainability going to be a different future as far as what you see?

Yeah, I always say that. I think the future is going to be fun. Fantastic, and we’re going to live thriving, fulfilling lives without having to move into caves, which is some things people think that we’re going to do now, but I think it’s going to be, I mean, I usually use the example, you know, Spotify or Netflix when we talk about, like, the future, because nobody really wants to go back to, you know, buying and, you know, going to a video store and renting stuff, you know, physical thing when you can have all the movies and music in your phone at any given time, it’s so much easier.

This is what we should think about for the future. It needs to be easier, more fantastic, and make our lives better. Otherwise, it’s not part of the future. It shouldn’t take part, I mean, and it needs to be sustainable at the same time. So I think Spotify is a great example of this. I mean, just think about the plastic things that we’re shipping. There is an oil product we’re shipping it all over the world. They took a lot of space in our living rooms, and then they got scratches, and you had to buy new ones, if you you know, scratch your favorite CD, whatever.

So this is like, if we can look at that kind of mindset for every single product out there, what would they look like, and how can they meet better and make lives easier without using so much resources? This is what we should be striving for. And I think yes, mostly the houses in the future will be flexible. They will be modular.

They will probably be able to grow our own food and have our own energy systems and water recycling systems in them, but I think it will be more of a collective thing than we just I have my own solar panel in my own house, and if I over produce, I would just have my own battery. It probably is going to be like a more living organic system that, you know, we share the locally produced solar energy or wind power, whatever, and it’s going to be very nice, and it’s not going to be so much different from now, but it’s going to be better. That’s my opinion.

Well, I think you know, what do they say from your lips to God’s ears, so that sounds like a good future. You’ve talked about 40 to 70% of global carbon emissions can be mitigated through the circle Circular Economy solutions. Can you explain how the circular economy principles can create such a significant reduction?

Well, yes. And I think it’s so interesting that the only thing they’re talking about at the, you know, the big climate meetings and everything, is like, Oh, how can we go into, you know, electric energy future, and that’s only half of it. How we consume and produce things are the rest. And that kind of includes cars, you know, houses and clothes and everything, everything, single thing that we produce is, I mean, sometimes it’s used fossil materials and things that, of course, has a big carbon footprint, but everything needs energy, so it’s all connected to energy somehow.

And still, we’re pumping up more oil than we ever have ever done before to be able to produce more and more and more things. And we still have this linear take make waste economy. So if we start sharing things instead, like I said, if we go from selling a product to a service and then we share those services, we can actually take 90% of the cars out of the rooms. We don’t need to have so many cars if we don’t need to own them. I mean, they’re standing still, 95% of the time, just taking up space.

And I know that you in the US are very like, Oh my God, and I want to take public transportation is so scary. We do it in Europe all the time. There’s no problem unless there’s a pandemic, because then it can be a problem. But if we share the cars, and we only have time 10% of the cars, we don’t need to use as much materials, we don’t have to use much energy, and they can just run around and pick us up whenever we want to.

You already have that in some parts of us, but we need to have it on a massive scale, where it’s actually people understand it’s better to just use those cars instead of having your own taking up space on the driveway. And you don’t have to clean the car, you don’t have to repair the car, you don’t have to pay your insurance, because we’re all sharing, and we just ping when we use it, and you don’t have to share it with another person in the car.

You can actually drive it yourself to work, whatever. But of course, it’s good if you a carpool as well. But still, it’s about like how we can share the resources and make our lives better, and you can even drink alcohol in the car if you want to go to a party, and it could be legal instead of illegal, as it is now, of course. So I mean, it could be much better, and it didn’t seem when it comes to clothes, I myself, I’m part of this fashion loop initiative where you basically it’s like a library for really fashionable vintage and secondhand clothes.

So every time I’m on a stage, instead of buying in new things, which I don’t do anyway, I stopped buying new things like 10 years ago. But anyway, if I want something that looks fresh and something that I haven’t worn before, I can just go there and I lend it and I give it back in a week or two, so then I don’t have to own it and I take up space in my wardrobe because I don’t want to wear it again. Yeah. So there are things where you can just share stuff, and it’s even better, and that saves a lot of carbon emissions. Of course, that was my point.

Yeah, well, that that all sounds, sounds wonderful. And I think that that’s the kind of stories we need to be telling to people that it isn’t so dire and it could be a great situation. I mean, I just paid my auto insurance bill. And it’s, you know, it’s going through the roof here in the US. And you think of that like that paid for, I don’t know, 100 Uber rides in that one in that one bill.

So you do see a lot of now, Waymo is here in LA and they have driverless cars. So it’s a little bit bizarre to see a car going around, but they seem to be making their way pretty effectively through the streets without a driver. It’s pretty mind blowing. So tell us a little bit about how people can follow the work that you’re doing or contribute to the work that you’re doing.

Yeah. So first of all, I have pretty much an active LinkedIn, so if you want to follow me on LinkedIn, please just press the Follow button. You can see me a lot on YouTube. I just made a TEDx talk, for instance, that’s going to be published soon. You can always go into cradle that se or the Nordic circle hotspot.org, if you want to also see what I do, what I do there.

Thank you so much, Elin, for being on the program and for the great work that you’re doing, and hopefully we can collaborate going forward, because it sounds like you’re really doing some amazing stuff out there.

No, thank you. And likewise, keep up the good work.

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