In this episode of Tangled, I speak to Nadine Galle. Nadine is a consultant at Metabolic, meaning she is a colleague of Thomas Mason, who I spoke to in episode 5. If you’ve listened to that show, you’ll know that Metabolic is a consulting and venture building firm that helps companies, communities and cities to move towards a circular – and more sustainable – economy.

Nadine is also one of the academic directors of a summer school course at the University of Amsterdam, called The Circular City. The programme explores the urban metabolism – meaning the flows of materials and energy coming into and going out of cities. I recently took part in the first edition of the course, which involved lectures and field trips around Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands, hearing from people who are designing new and interesting ways of managing resources.

On top of her other work, Nadine is somehow also managing to pursue a PhD. Her research is in a new field called ecological engineering, which she will explain during our conversation.

We also talk about what a circular economy really means, why we need to redesign cities to take natural ecosystem processes into account, and what Rubik’s cubes can teach us about problem solving.

You can find Nadine online at nadinegalle.com and on Twitter @earthtonadine