A regenerative economy is one designed to leave its resource base healthier than it found it — rebuilding soil, restoring biodiversity and keeping materials in continuous use — rather than merely slowing the damage of a linear “take, make, waste” system. It goes a step past sustainability: where a sustainable business aims to do less harm, a regenerative one aims to do measurable good, returning more to the living systems it depends on than it removes.
The scale of the gap is what makes this shift urgent. According to Circle Economy’s Circularity Gap Report, the global economy was just 7.2% circular in 2023, meaning more than 90% of the materials we extract are wasted, discarded or otherwise unavailable for another cycle. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation frames the same problem from the design side: most products and materials are engineered for a single trip to landfill, when they could instead be built to circulate. Regeneration is the answer to both — closing the loop on materials and rebuilding the natural capital a linear economy quietly spends.
Regenerative vs. merely sustainable
Sustainability sets the bar at doing no harm; regeneration sets it at leaving things measurably better. A sustainable farm tries not to deplete its soil, while a regenerative one actively builds it — through cover cropping, reduced tillage and organic matter that pulls carbon down into the ground. The Food and Agriculture Organization has long warned that a third of the world’s soils are already degraded, so a business model that simply holds the line is no longer enough. The regenerative economy treats healthy soil, clean water and living ecosystems as assets to grow, not costs to minimise.
Why hemp keeps coming up
Industrial hemp turns up in almost every regenerative conversation because it is a genuinely versatile, fast-growing crop: it can be grown into textiles, paper, bioplastics and building materials such as hempcrete, it grows densely enough to suppress weeds without heavy chemical input, and its deep roots can help structure and aerate soil. Those are real, verifiable properties — not a cure-all, but a strong example of a single plant feeding several material loops at once.
In Value Verses episode 68, guest Hans Kamperman argues the case in stronger terms, describing hemp as the most versatile plant on earth and tracing how a once hemp-based economy was displaced during the industrial revolution by petrochemical and pharmaceutical interests.
We used to live in a hemp-dominated economy, and now we live in a petrochemical and pharmaceutical-dominated one. — Hans Kamperman (translated from Dutch)
Kamperman also discusses “free energy” and electro-culture techniques for boosting crop yields — claims that sit well outside established science and that we present strictly as his own perspective, not as fact. What survives that filter is the durable part of his message: local self-reliance, healthier soil and materials that come from living plants instead of fossil hydrocarbons. That is the same instinct that drives the regenerative economy.
How a business starts: plastic-neutral as step one
For a purpose-driven company, regeneration is a direction, not a switch you flip overnight — and the most concrete on-ramp is taking responsibility for the material you already put into the world. Going plastic-neutral is exactly that first, measurable step: a business measures its plastic footprint, designs out what it can, and funds the recovery of the rest through a verified partner. In Niels’s mission that partner is Corsair Group International and its CSRnow programme, which turns each certified tonne into physically recovered material rather than an accounting entry.
That is where the circular loop becomes real. Instead of sending mixed, hard-to-recycle plastic to landfill, recovered waste is converted back into usable feedstock — the mechanics are covered in how plastic-to-oil recycling works. Plastic-neutrality closes one loop today; regeneration is the wider goal that loop points toward. If you want the full model — measure, reduce, offset and verify — start with what plastic-neutral business means.
From less harm to more good
A regenerative economy will not arrive as a single policy or product; it is built one decision at a time — the material you choose, the waste you take back, the soil you rebuild. Taking responsibility for your plastic is a step any business can start now, and it opens onto something larger: an economy that heals what it uses. If that is the direction you want your work to move in, becoming plastic-neutral through the Purpose Driven Business mission — in partnership with Corsair Group International / CSRnow — is a real, verifiable place to begin.
