Sustainability: Newscaster Jon Snow talks to Dame Ellen MacArthur about the circular economy and rethinking the future, in a short film looking back on the first year of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Challenging Ellen on the fundamental principles of the Foundation’s mission – to inspire a generation to re-think and re-design for a positive future – Jon investigates the circular economy as a framework for change and questions the actual implementation and impact of such a model on business.

With over 5 years of research and a full year of the Foundation under her belt, Dame Ellen is well placed to handle these testing questions and to make a strong case for the circular economy framework.

The circular economy is a different business model. It’s a different way of looking at the system as a whole. We know our future doesn’t work long term, but within a circular economy it does.

There's a world of opportunity to re-think and re-design the way we make stuff.

'Re-Thinking Progress' explores how through a change in perspective we can re-design the way our economy works - designing products that can be 'made to be made again' and powering the system with renewable energy. It questions whether with creativity and innovation we can build a restorative economy.

Find out more about the circular economy at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and follow them on Twitter.

For an in-depth look at the economic and business rationale for making this transition, see the Towards the Circular Economy reports, available on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website.

Did you know that the average cotton T-shirt requires over 700 gallons of water to manufacture? Follow the production, use and disposal of the average cotton T-shirt in this USAgain educational video.

700 gallons of water.

Try going a day without plastic. In this touching and often flat-out-funny film, we follow "everyman" Jeb Berrier as he embarks on a global tour to unravel the complexities of our plastic world. What starts as a film about plastic bags evolves into a wholesale investigation into plastic and its effect on our waterways, oceans, and even our own bodies. We see how our crazy for plastic world has finally caught up to us and what we can do about it. Today. Right now.

Where does your garbage go when you throw it away? Away for the residents of Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington is the Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington Oregon. Sustainable Today visited this mammoth site to see how it works and how you can limit the amount of waste that is buried. We also visited the new power plant under construction at the site that will generate electricity from the methane gas pulled from the landfill. Related subjects:

• Garbage, Landfill, methane, power, sustainability, environment

Mike and JoAnna Bresnan of Costa Rica's, Children Feeding Children, program and the change and transformation that is occurring around the world. They introduce interviews with Annie Leonard and David Orr while attending the 2010 Bioneers Conference held October 15-17, 2010 in San Rafael, California.

Filmed by Barry Heidt of GeoSpirit.tv and edited by Rob Russo.