Three years ago, circularity was still being run out of sustainability teams. What has changed since, and why are supply chain professionals suddenly the ones driving it?
In this episode of Circular Coffee Break, Michael welcomes back Deborah Dull, Managing Partner at Trillium Digital Services, founder of the Circular Supply Chain Network, and one of the leading voices in circular supply chains. Deborah first joined the show in Season 1 back in January 2023, and a lot has happened since.
Deborah explains why circularity has shifted from a sustainability initiative to an operations strategy. She describes how de-manufacturing is becoming a local sourcing strategy, why "sovereignty of materials" resonates from Washington to Beijing, and why recycling, sixty years in, remains the circle of last resort. She shares real examples, from Toyota's 300-mile car disassembly operation in the UK to AWS disassembling and upgrading data center servers, and introduces the Circular Supply Chain Network's concept of the hundred-mile supply chain.
Together, Michael and Deborah dig into the hard parts of scaling. They discuss the chicken-and-egg problem of supply and demand for secondary materials, why volume guarantees and industry coalitions may be the missing market signal, and why supply chain professionals still aren't being given a clear problem statement. They also explore the infrastructure gap, from second-chance employment as decentralized urban mining to the tariffs and policies that may quietly build the circular economy, and why AI and agentic systems may be the only way circular supply chains will ever truly scale.
Why listen?
Whether you work in supply chain, sourcing, sustainability, or policy, or you're simply curious how we get from promising pilots to circular supply chains that actually scale, this conversation offers a pragmatic, operationally grounded view of where circularity is heading next.
Keywords: circular supply chain, circular economy, circularity, sustainable operations, secondary materials, remanufacturing, de-manufacturing, urban mining, recycled materials, material sovereignty, supply chain resilience, local sourcing, hundred-mile supply chain, volume guarantees, industrial symbiosis, circular markets, second-chance employment, supply chain sustainability, AI in supply chain, agentic AI, tariffs, CBAM, Toyota circular economy, AWS remanufacturing, Deborah Dull, Circular Supply Chain Network, Trillium Digital Services, Circular Coffee Break podcast
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