Championing Change: Marie Carlisle (House & Garden)

The co-founder of award-winning social enterprise and B Corp, Goldfinger, was inspired to tackle waste when she was just nine years old. Her brainchild is now all grown up and addressing waste wood, waste food and wasted potential.

It was a giant fridge that got Marie Carlisle interested in sustainability. She was returning to the city after a family daytrip to the idyllic islands, lush mountains and sandy beaches outside Hong Kong, where she grew up, when their boat had to manoeuvre around something in the water. ‘As we got closer, I realized it was an industrial fridge that had been thrown into the ocean,’ she says. ‘There was a disconnect between the pristine natural environment we’d spent the day in and that filthy harbour. Even at nine years old, it struck me as a man-made problem, and I wanted to do something about it.’She got her chance 18 years later when she co-founded a social enterprise with Oliver Waddington-Ball in 2013. The pair met at Nottingham University studying business and spent a year in China in the run up to the Beijing Olympics. ‘We watched communities shipped out of neighbourhoods and old buildings destroyed,’ she says. ‘The city was transformed by so-called progress. We couldn’t help but think there must be a better way to do business.’ They’d learned about the circular economy and social enterprises and wanted to combine Waddington-Ball’s love of carpentry with Carlisle’s experience in the luxury sector (she spent four years in fashion and cosmetics after university). They saw their opportunity when a space became available at the bottom of the iconic Trellick Tower on Golborne Road. Kensington and Chelsea is not only where Waddington-Ball grew up, but one of London’s most inequitable boroughs. Two thirds of its children live in overcrowded homes just streets away from houses selling for more than £10 million and life expectancies can vary by as much as 17 years. ‘It is a divided community, and we wanted to be a bridge,’ says Carlisle.They named their venture ‘Goldfinger’ after Trellick Tower’s architect and came up with a three-pronged business model to provide that bridge. They made bespoke furniture from waste wood in a workshop in the basement, displayed it in a showroom on the ground-floor and sold it to affluent local residents and businesses – within three years they were collaborating with Tom Dixon. Profits were funnelled into The Goldfinger Academy and The People’s Kitchen. They taught woodworking skills to marginalised young people – including young offenders and those excluded from mainstream education – through the academy, and the People's Kitchen tackled food waste and social isolation in collaboration with Panella, the restaurant next door, by providing vulnerable residents with free meals made from surplus food.The impact was almost immediate. Trellick Tower resident, Jason Rowe, who was working as a supermarket cashier at the time, knocked on their door as soon as they opened, asking for an opportunity. They offered him their first apprenticeship. ‘When we met him, Jason was quite a broken young man,’ says Carlisle. ‘He is now a husband and a father and teaches carpentry at a local college. He’s passing the skills he learnt with us onto another generation.’Some things have changed since those early days. Fellow B Corp, Another County, has taken a majority shareholding, and they have moved away from Golborne Road. One of their first employees has taken over the basement and runs one of the handful of British workshops they now work with. ‘A partner model makes us more agile and more able to respond to clients’ needs,’ explains Carlisle. Wood comes from a variety of sources – the majority still from trees felled due to disease, weather and urban development that would otherwise have been chipped and burned. This is supplemented with donated, Made in Britain and FSC wood. And the ‘Robin Hood’ business model remains. Their award-winning Goldfinger Academy programmes are now run through Morley College and Unlock, and Panella has expanded into their former showroom and still offers a regular soup kitchen powered by Goldfinger profits and surplus food from local eateries. ‘It’s a free meal for anyone in the community,’ says Carlisle. ‘And it's a lovely social gathering.’ A new showroom in Clerkenwell brings them closer to architects and specifiers and a new Head of Design and Production in Tom Hatfield (formerly at Pinch and Benchmark) has refined their design aesthetic and ensures that everything has that Goldfinger ‘Midas’ touch. Carlisle has relocated to France to start a family but remains on the board. ‘Waste is just a resource in the wrong hands,’ she says. ‘Whether it’s waste wood, surplus food or wasted potential, everything has value in the right hands.’ Katie Treggiden is a craft, design and sustainability writer, a nature facilitator and the author of Broken: Mending and Repair in a Throwaway World (Ludion, 2023).