Many of the people we have interviewed as part of our Procurement with Purpose initiative have been known to us for years. But sometimes a new name starts popping up on the radar, and we started noticing a certain Deborah Dull featuring in professional discussions. Dull by name, certainly not by nature, it seemed, so we caught up with her during lockdown at her home in Seattle
But first, a little background. She comes from Washington State, has been working for around 12 years since graduating, and has some great names on her cv – Microsoft for several years, the Gates Foundation, and now GE Digital. She also lived in London for a couple of years, and did a (part-time) masters in Supply Chain at Liverpool University.
As well as her day job though, she is involved with the Circular Economy Club, and when we spoke, she was still buzzing about a virtual event she’d held the previous day. “With the lockdown, people are tuning into events from all over, so this was planned as just a Pacific Northwest event, but we had people from all over the world - South Africa, Europe - participating yesterday. We need to do more of this – it really could be the future of collaboration around the circular economy”. That collaboration is essential, she says, because in many countries and markets, thinking in this area is not very advanced. So, leaders can really help others get up to speed.
Dull also has another string to her bow. With the “Supply Chain Queen”, Sheri R. Hinish, she leads “Supply Chain Revolution”. “It’s still in its early stages, but it’s an initiative to promote new ways of working, change behaviours in the profession, and be more inclusive” she says. It’s about getting groups together to debate and maybe even provide some global leadership for the supply chain profession, although she is quick to say she’s not criticising existing bodies such as CIPS, ISM, and ASCM on that front.
After establishing her portfolio of interests, we moved on to circularity. How did this become such an interest for her? Dull is a self-confessed supply chain geek, having been quoted saying things like “I love inventory”! So, she was fascinated a few years back when she started reading about circularity. She started researching and writing herself, and is now a regular speaker on the topic at events, and aims to “spread the good word”. But perhaps she can define this topic before we go any deeper?
“We’ve gotten good over the centuries at the linear economy – we take materials from mines or forests, we make something, we use it, we throw it away. The problem is what we throw away. The circular economy is about getting more value out of that “waste”, or designing it out altogether where possible. Waste streams become value streams”.
She believes that supply chain is best placed as a profession to drive this, as success often needs businesses at different tiers in the supply chain to work together. But she finds it is often sustainability officers, scientists, and designers who are in the majority at events. “We do need all those people involved. The way we interact with materials will change greatly, for instance. But the circular evangelists tend to promote the rejection of all current business practices. Procurement and supply chain can build a bridge here, and promote circularity as a strategy for a new type of global economy”.
In the future, she expects to see shorter supply chains and more local and regional activity. “Most regions have the raw materials they need, we don’t need to ship materials around the world. If you want to repair and renew, that needs local support and skills, and a more flexible approach to manufacturing”. That all promotes a less global approach, as well as local innovation – she talks about a firm – Ecovative Design - making packaging material from mushrooms to replace Styrofoam as an example.
Dull is sounding quite radical now. She thinks that in ten years’ time we won’t be buying from primary commodity markets – it will all be secondary markets (for example, selling recycled/recovered plastics). She believes we will be (literally) mining landfill sites within our lifetimes to extract valuable materials, helped by new technology, of course. And we’re getting close to running out of key materials such as some metals, so “AI will be a game-changer, helping us find alternative materials to those currently used, making connections from all the data that is available”.
Indeed, once you get into this way of thinking, the issues and opportunities come thick and fast. We touched on the current PPE (personal protective equipment) crisis in the health system. “Why is so much designed to be used once and thrown away? If it was made so it could be cleaned and re-used, that would have been so much better. The supply chain – and supply chain people – should have fixed that.” Some firms are innovating in this field, and Dull mentions Stryker’s Sustainability Solutions which is a provider of reprocessing and remanufacturing services for single-use medical devices – the firm inspects, cleans, tests and re-sterilizes equipment so it can be safely used again.
We finished the discussion by asking Dull how the average procurement executive could start to do something useful and effective in terms of circularity. “Do realise that decisions you make impact the world, and ultimately you can contribute to real shifts in global behaviour. Start to be aware of the inputs to the system and the outputs. For instance, I suggest that people literally weigh what they buy and what they throw away – reducing supplier packaging can be a big win”.
That’s a very pragmatic step, but Dull has big ideas too. “In an alternative universe, every procurement person would only buy secondary goods, and global markets would correct themselves (for availability and pricing) within 6 months”. We suspect we will hear much more from her in the coming years!