Material Matters with Grant Gibson

Tom Szaky is the founder and CEO of TerraCycle, a platform working in over 20 countries, recycling a vast array of materials that other people simply don’t want – think cigarette butts, dirty nappies, biscuit wrappers, coffee pods and pet food bags to name just a few. 
Meanwhile, Loop, which he launched in 2019, is a system for reuse where manufacturers can develop reusable versions of their products that are then sold through major retailers, with the same convenience as current disposable items. 
Over the years, Tom has written four books, as well as producing and staring in TerraCycle’s reality show, Human Resources, and won a slew of awards.
In this episode, we talk about: why his office is full of rubbish; the economics of recycling; how TerraCycle reuses cigarette butts and chewing gum; the problem with sandpaper; his desire to bring back the milkman; why Loop has worked in France but struggled elsewhere; the importance of convenience; being sustainable in Trump’s America; his refugee  childhood; finding a home in Canada; starting his own company at 14 years old; dropping out of Princeton; and how TerraCycle began by manufacturing ‘worm poop’. 
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Sophie Thomas has a CV that can genuinely be described as intriguing. As one website put it, she is an ‘unusual mix of campaigner, practising designer and chartered waste manager’. She has been at the forefront of the debate about sustainable design for the best part of 30 years and, in 2025, was awarded an OBE for her tireless work. 
Among other things, she founded the pioneering (but now defunct) communications consultancy Thomas.Matthews in 1997 and led the the influential Great Recovery Project in 2012. Currently, she wears a number of (always sustainable) hats… although her career is about to take another turn. 
In this episode we talk about: picking up a gong from the Palace; being an untidy worker; having lots of jobs; how her interest in sustainability and waste began; working on the Earth Centre and why it wasn’t a failure; a life-changing trip to a recycling centre in the Netherlands; taking a thousand designers to rubbish dumps across the country; her obsession with the toothbrush; collaborating with the likes of glassblower Louis Thompson and designer Ella Doran; her feelings of guilt and her desire to create; being a ‘graphic activist’; starting her career at The Body Shop; and why ink is her future. 
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Anna Foster is the founder and creative director of the sustainable fashion brand ELV Denim – a company that has saved thousands of pairs of jeans from going into landfill, upcycling them into something genuinely desirable instead. 
She started her career in magazines and worked as a fashion editor for 20 years at titles such as Exit and i-D, before becoming fashion director at Lula and fashion director-at-large at Australian title RUSSH. 
Since launching ELV – short for East London Vintage – in 2018 she was won a slew of awards, nominations and accolades, including Responsible Brand of The Year from Country & Town House and Walpole’s Brands of Tomorrow 2025. 
In this episode, she talks about: why women are born to innovate; what happens to our old clothes; reworking existing garments into something new; finding all her makers within a three mile radius of the studio; celebrating skill; the issues with denim and how ELV strives to solve them; valuing things other people don’t want; her dislike of stretch denim; being an ‘environmental enthusiast’; extending her material palette and making pieces from old hotel linen; the importance of collaboration; and the meaning of the word luxury. 
Important fact check: Grant misread some of his statistics in this episode. We produce between 4.5 to 6 billion pairs of jeans a year and a pair of jeans uses 3,800 litres of water to produce. We’re happy to correct these errors. 
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Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez is the co-founder of the seaweed-based packaging company, Notpla. He and Pierre Paslier started working together in a kitchen while students at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College in 2013 and have since gone on to create a genuinely global brand. 
Essentially, Notpla aims to replace single-use plastic products – a huge issue with the world producing somewhere in the region of 400 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, and packaging estimated to account for 33 per cent of that. 
Like many people, Material Matters first came across the company a little under a decade ago when it launched Ooho, an edible bubble made from a seaweed membrane that contained water – or in some instances a rather strong cocktail – and, since then, the company has gone on to win numerous awards, including the inaugural Earthshot Prize in 2022.
In this episode we talk about: the mis-use of plastic; Ooho’s curious name; using seaweed at the London Marathon; why the material is the perfect replacement for plastic; the historic uses of seaweed – in glass, medicine and even beer; making paper and spoons from the material; flying water balloons over Hyde Park; how Notpla started as a side project; the importance of crowd funding to its beginnings; working from a kitchen table and being ‘parasites’ of Imperial College; scaling up; meeting resistance from the plastic industry; concerns over bio-plastics; the effect Covid had on the company; and not wanting to be an architect.
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Shubhi Sachan is a multi-disciplinary designer and the founder of Material Library of India. The New Delhi-based library was the first of its type in India and acts as a research and design consultancy committed to unlocking the potential of industrial and agricultural waste – of which India, a country with a population of over 1.4 billion people, has plenty.
Over the years, MLI has worked with brands and organisations such as IKEA and the British Council, as well as presenting work and ideas across the globe, including at last year’s Material Matters London where it reimagined cotton as a climate-adaptive, culturally rich material.
In this episode Shubhi discusses: setting up MLI in 2017; why she decided to tackle waste in the first instance; India’s relationship with textiles and ‘waste colonialism’; the importance of the ‘rebirth’ of industrial materials; how natural materials can look after themselves; her recent project on cotton and why the crop needs to be re-thought; opening a thrift store where textiles are the currency; refusing to reject capitalism; curating seeds for IKEA; creating streetwear from rejected condoms; studying in England; becoming a successful surface designer; and why her family have questioned her career choices.
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