Bios (copy verbatim)

José Manuel Moller is the Cofounder & CEO of Common House, a London-based studio turning circular strategy into real implementation. He founded Algramo in 2013, scaling smart-refill to six countries. UN Champion of the Earth 2023. Serves on the UN Zero Waste Advisory Board and advises COP31.

José Manuel Moller is a founder and global operator of zero-waste systems. He is the Cofounder & CEO of Common House, a London-based studio that helps cities, corporates and foundations move from circular strategy to real implementation, with practice areas in reuse, organics and waste prevention.

In 2013 he founded Algramo in Chile, pioneering smart-refill and "pay-for-content" models that scaled to six countries, 5,000+ stores, and partnerships with Unilever, Nestlé and Walmart — reaching reuse rates above 80% in specific communities. For this work he was named UN Champion of the Earth in 2023.

He serves on the UN Zero Waste Advisory Board, advises the High-Level Climate Champion of COP31, and contributes to the Zero Waste Forum. He is launching Reuse for All with the Röchling Foundation and Yunus Environment Hub. He writes about the post-optimistic era and the city as the unit of change.

José Manuel Moller is a founder, operator and global advisor working at the implementation edge of the circular economy. He is the Cofounder & CEO of Common House, a London-based studio that helps cities, corporates and foundations move from circular strategy to real, in-market implementation. Common House works across three practice areas — consulting, acceleration and venture building — focused on reuse, organics and waste prevention.

His work began in 2013 in Chile, when he founded Algramo to attack a specific problem: low-income families paid up to 50% more per gram for basic goods because they could only afford small packaging. Algramo answered with smart-refill stations and a "pay-for-content" model that decoupled product from package. Over the following decade, Algramo scaled to six countries and more than 5,000 stores, and built partnerships with Unilever, Nestlé and Walmart. In specific community deployments, reuse rates moved past 80%, demonstrating that refill is not a niche behavior but a default that emerges when the system is designed for it. In recognition of this work, he was named UN Champion of the Earth in 2023 — the United Nations Environment Programme's highest environmental honour.

Today, that operating experience informs his international work. He is a member of the UN Zero Waste Advisory Board, advises the High-Level Climate Champion of COP31 in Türkiye, and contributes to the Zero Waste Forum. He is currently launching the first retailer refill station in Costa Rica, and co-launching Reuse for All — a programme to seed reuse infrastructure in emerging markets — with the Röchling Foundation and the Yunus Environment Hub.

Common House is the synthesis of those years. It exists because the bottleneck in the circular economy is no longer ideas or strategy; it is operators who can land a reuse system in a real city, with a real retailer, against a real P&L. Common House staffs, advises and invests against that bottleneck.

He writes about what he calls the post-optimistic era — a period in which climate progress can no longer rely on borrowed optimism and must instead come from designed, implemented, audited systems. Recurring themes in his writing include: the city as the unit of change, packaging as a unit of trust, lessons learned from Algramo, and the structural gap between circular policy and circular operations.

He is selective about how he spends time. He engages with cities running or designing zero-waste programs, corporates working on reuse or organics at the implementation stage, NGOs and foundations funding circular implementation, and senior operators interested in joining Common House. He does not engage with cold sales, generic invitations, speaking requests without context, or crypto.

José Manuel Moller is based in London, with active work in Latin America, Europe and the COP31 region. His personal site is josemanuelmoller.com; Common House is at wearecommonhouse.com.