Circular Design Workshops

Do you need help shifting into a circular business model? We poured our years of experience developing circular supply chains into comprehensive workshops to jumpstart or advance initiatives like take-back, recycling, subscription, renewal and resale at consumer products companies. Our trainings empower teams with a systems-wide perspective on circularity matched with tactical knowledge to make change happen.

Workshop Offerings

CIRCULAR PRODUCT DESIGN

For Product Designers

Choices made at the design stage are important and irreversible determinations of how much pollution is created in production and its potential to be used more, repaired or recycled instead of landfilled or incinerated. Circular product design is a crucial up-skill for achieving circular goals including take-back, recommerce and post-consumer recycling.

The Circular Product Design Workshop teaches product designers how to apply systems thinking and the principles of circular design so that their products can cycle freely through circular business models.

CIRCULAR OPERATIONS

For Operations Teams

As brands stand up circular business models like rental, resale or reuse, they can be held back by logistics, marketing and data designed for linear operations. Successful take-back, recommerce, repair and post-consumer recycling hinges on internal systems redesigned to track and process products and materials through a circular supply chain.

The Circular Operations Workshop covers the wide range of simple and complex systems interventions needed to redesign linear retail systems for circularity. This workshop is intended for operational roles including accounting, technology, logistics, marketing and sales.

CIRCULAR STRATEGY

For Leadership Teams

Circular Strategy is a brass tacks, all-action workshop where we guide your team through the process of developing a circular transition plan, including strategy, goals and measurements, for a circular pilot or a transition for the entire company. To craft the circular transition plan, we work from a backcasting framework that allows us to break free from the linear current reality and co-create a desired circular future from what we’ve yet to invent.

This workshop can be a follow on to the product or operations design workshop or stand alone. Participants represent cross-functional teams and are decision makers within the company.

MIX & MATCH WORKSHOP

Do you have a specific needs to bridge as you reach for circularity goals? We can work with you to identify learning objectives and to select exercises from our workshop library to get a training that’s tailor fit for your brands needs.

Take Our Quiz

5-questions to find your spot in the circular economy.

WE BELIEVE IN YOU

We believe in our clients desire and ability to transform the consumer goods sector into one that is equitable, regenerative and more fun. We believe that you can see the injustice, inefficiency and inevitable demise of business as usual and that you want to do something about it.

WE BELIEVE IN OURSELVES

Nicole Bassett and Maura Dilley have studied, taught, reflected on and lamented about sustainability together for twelve years and in various industries – sustainable food, textiles, apparel and hard goods. We know where to find strategic interventions for circularity in the consumer goods businesses.

WE BELIEVE IN TOGETHER

We believe in circular education that is human-centered; draws clarity and strategy from a grounding in principles; is shaped by frameworks and is bold enough to be the change the world needs now. Linking our work with yours will make the circular economy possible.

About Us

  • Maura Dilley is a systems change facilitator and sustainability educator specializing in the development of a circular economy for the consumer goods sector. Prior to launching Cascade Circular, Maura was Circular Lead at The Renewal Workshop, providing workshops for partner brands as they transitioned into a circular supply chain; a circular design residency program and research into post-consumer textile recycling. Maura forged her circularity and apparel expertise during her time at the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute where she worked to introduce the cradle to cradle methodology to fashion brands in the US and Europe. Previous to that, Maura worked in the social enterprise space as a columnist for Impact Alpha, reporting on impact investing for sustainable seafood and as a systems change facilitator with the consultancy that is now SecondMuse.

    Maura holds a certificate in social enterprise management from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, training in human centered design from the Stanford d.school and a master’s degree in strategic leadership towards sustainability from the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden. She lives in San Francisco with her young family and vicariously through friends with interesting hobbies like reading, cooking and camping.

  • Nicole Bassett is a leader in circularity. Nicole co-founded The Renewal Workshop, a circular business that is demonstrating how the apparel and textile industry can transition into circular business models through product life extension and recommerce. In March 2022, the global logistics company Bleckmann acquired The Renewal Workshop and Nicole now leads Bleckmann’s circularity strategy. Nicole’s curiosity for finding solutions to the root cause of a problem has aligned with systems change within supply chain operations. Often the solution is the intersection of behavior change of which she excels in leading with the technical changes required.

    Prior to co-founding The Renewal Workshop, Nicole applied her passion for environmental responsibility and human rights in consumer products to building a sustainable supply chain. She has served as head of human rights at Specialized Bicycles, director of sustainability for prAna and director of social responsibility at Patagonia. Nicole received her Master’s in Environmental Studies with a focus on Business Strategy and Sustainability from York University in Toronto, Canada. She lives in Hood River, Oregon where you can find her playing outdoors, petting her dogs or reminding her husband to rinse out the ziplock bags to be used again.