Clothes

The emblem of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a set of nested circles, was on Dame Ellen's teal hoodie when we met in her headquarters, an old sailmaker's loft on the Isle of Wight. In 2005, at age 28, MacArthur finished sailing around the world on a 75-foot trimaran in a record time of just over 71 days—alone. She had packed 72 days' worth of food. She had raced storms off Antarctica and fixed a broken generator. She arrived home, having survived a microcosm of Spaceship Earth, with a visceral awareness of limited resources.

Why wasn't everyone talking about that? she wondered. She gave up competitive sailing and instead traded on her fame and access to corporate boardrooms -- "it would be a waste not to use it," she told me -- to establish an organization that has done more than any other to promote the circular economy, using a hierarchy of strategies. The best is the simplest: Waste less stuff by keeping it in use.