Dame Ellen MacArthur shares her vision of a circular economy for a better planet

I will never ever forget
the feeling I felt as I saw the sea

and set foot on the boat
for the first time.

And to that four-year-old kid,

it was the greatest sense of freedom
that I could ever imagine.

I just felt, you know, from that age,

I would absolutely love one day,
somehow, to sail around the world.

[In February 2005,
Ellen set a new world record

for fastest solo
circumnavigation of the globe.]

When you set off on those journeys,

you know, you take with you
everything you need for your survival.

What you have is all you have.

You have to manage what you have

down to the last drop of diesel,
the last packet of food.

It's absolutely essential,
else you won't make it.

And I suddenly realized,
"But why is our world any different?"

You know, we have finite resources,

available to us once
in the history of humanity.

You know, metals, plastics, fertilizers.

We're digging all this stuff
out of the ground, and we're using it up.

How can that work in the long-term?

Surely there was a different way
we could use resources globally

that used them and not used them up.