The Selling Circular Podcast

Jimmy Funkhouser spent a decade inside Toys R Us before opening FERAL, a Denver outdoor shop that spent its first two and a half years selling new gear like everybody else, until he and a colleague realized brands control price right up until a product enters the aftermarket. In this conversation with Garr Punnett and Sabira Lakhani chat with Jimmy as he walks them through the operating reality of...

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...

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...

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 3...

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 standard...

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 throu...

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 r...

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 wa...

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...

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....

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...

Adam Rack, co-founder of Revino, joins Garr to break down what it actually takes to build reusable glass bottle infrastructure in the United States — from negotiating with glass manufacturers and adhesive chemists to navigating regional bottle weight politics and deposit return carve-outs. This is a ground-level look at the supply chain plumbing behind one of the most promising circular economy mo...

Jamil Wyne, climate tech investor, educator, and lead author of Oxford's Climate Tech Opportunity report, joins Garr to unpack why the venture capital playbook is failing many climate companies, why adaptation and resilience are still dangerously underfunded, and where hope actually lives in 2026.

Matt Orsagh spent 17 years inside the CFA Institute, working at the intersection of corporate governance, ESG, and sustainability until he realized the system he was trying to fix from within was fundamentally designed to produce the outcomes he was fighting against. In this conversation, Matt and Garr dig into why GDP is a terrible measure of success, why degrowth isn't a political position but a...

Every day, billions of gallons of liquid fertilizer get flushed down the drain with clean drinking water. The nutrients your body produces — nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium — are the exact same ones farmers pay a fortune to spray on their crops. And the portable sanitation industry? It hasn't meaningfully innovated since the 1970s. The founders of wasted* saw all of this and thought: what if we st...

Megan Zack shares her journey from the insurance industry to becoming a sustainable architect. She discusses the evolution of green building practices, the challenges of promoting sustainability in architecture, and the importance of the circular economy. Megan emphasizes the need for smarter decision-making in design and the significance of reusing materials. The conversation also touches on clie...

Garr Punnett and Jon Strassner delve into the world of podcasting, sustainability, and the challenges of circular economy practices. They reflect on their experiences at conferences, the serendipitous nature of podcasting, and the importance of building relationships within the industry. Jon shares insights from his six years of podcasting, emphasizing the evolution of their discussions from envir...

What if the key to a more sustainable manufacturing future has been sitting in dusty warehouses this whole time? In this episode, we sit down with Martin Weber, CEO and co-founder of SpareTech, who left a dream job at Porsche to tackle one of manufacturing's most overlooked problems: the hundreds of billions of dollars in spare parts collecting dust across factory floors worldwide. Martin takes us...

What happens when 60% of U.S. apartments have zero recycling access? You build your own solution. Ryan Smith started Recyclops after discovering his college apartment—and every apartment he visited—had no recycling. Twelve years later, he's running an Uber-style recycling network across 30 states, picking up everything from residential recyclables to dirty diapers to Amazon's unsellable inventory....

What happens when the sustainability executive who built Walmart's first corporate sustainability program tells us we've been asking the wrong questions about circular economy all along? Andy Ruben—founder of Trove, innovator of Walmart's omnichannel strategy, and a pioneer who's been in the trenches of sustainability since 2004—joins Garr and Sabira for a candid conversation about why circular ec...

With Garr out for the Thanksgiving Holiday, Sabira reconnects with former colleague Vishal, who leads Waste Warriors—a nonprofit tackling the overwhelming waste crisis in India's Himalayan region. From his journey working at Saahas Zero Waste to now managing 200 team members across remote mountain communities, Vishal shares what it truly means to build a career in waste management—and why it's so...

Christopher Hale shares his journey in the electronics recycling and refurbishment industry, discussing the challenges and opportunities within the circular economy. He emphasizes the importance of sustainability, the competitive landscape in recycling, and the role of affiliate marketing in driving consumer attention toward refurbishment options. Chris also advocates for the right to repair movem...

What if the key to a multi-million dollar business was hidden in corporate America's trash bins? Meet Damon Carson, CEO of Repurposed Materials Inc., who built a nationwide empire by betting on industrial waste that others pay to destroy. In this revealing conversation, discover why major corporations choose landfills over reuse, learn the surprising economics behind the "fast nickel or slow dime"...

Join us for an inspiring conversation with Aliya Marder from Ridwell as we explore how one company is transforming the recycling landscape from grassroots community sessions to a groundbreaking national mail-in program. Discover why passionate recycling advocates are the secret vectors of change in their communities, learn about the patchwork of solutions emerging across America, and understand wh...

Join Garr and Sabira as they dive deep into the complex world of recycling & EPR policy with John Hite. Explore how America's patchwork of state laws creates both opportunities and challenges for waste management reform, from California's groundbreaking standards to Montana's youth-led climate lawsuit. Learn why a major constitutional challenge could reshape the future of recycling programs na...