The circular economy is an alternative to the “take, make, dispose” model. It means keeping materials and products in use – through reuse, repair, refurbishment, remanufacture, and, where appropriate, recycling, composting, and other forms of recovery. In this model, maximizing resources is a key goal. We need to uncouple endless resource consumption from prosperity. In an ideal world, we should be designing out waste and pollution and regenerating natural systems.
Why is this more relevant now than ever? Recycling cannot keep up with the rising demand for the metals, plastics, and other materials we use. According to the Circularity Gap Report 2025, 82 percent of the materials that enter the global economy are virgin inputs, and only 7 percent of the world’s resource use is circular. Despite extensive waste management efforts in developed countries, only 6.9 per cent is recycled. Products and systems are still designed in such a way that most of their materials are not recirculated. For example, one common EU metric, the “circular material use rate,” shows that only 12 percent of material used is recycled or reused.
Designers play a crucial role in the circular economy because they create product lifecycles. Products that last longer, are modular, and easy to disassemble encourage a system where it is cheaper and simpler to maintain and upgrade over time. Business models are important too. Leasing and viewing products as services reward makers for creating durable products instead of just producing more. Preventive and restorative maintenance needs to cost less than simply throwing things away. Waste heat, water, and mineral residues should support other companies’ processes.
And it is occurring in every industry. In construction, ensuring that structural components can be reused will significantly reduce the amount of waste produced by demolition. Using circular practices to extend the life of a garment, such as repair and resale. Even fiber-to-fiber recycling must be done carefully. Electronics should have much longer software support and easily available spare parts.
Circularity is not a buzzword or an excuse to continue with business as usual. It can only be achieved by real structural change and a willingness to have those hard conversations about limits and equity. If efficiency gains merely lower prices and encourage more consumption, there are no environmental gains. Naming and setting targets that demonstrate how prevention and reuse come above recycling is also important. It means considering the full life cycle of products and ensuring that resources are kept in the economy for as long as possible.
In the near future, the circular economy is likely to evolve from a mostly voluntary, “best-practice” agenda into an increasingly rules-driven operating model for companies and public buyers. In the EU, this shift is already visible: the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation will progressively set product-specific requirements and expand tools such as Digital Product Passports to improve tracea-bility, repairability, and recycled-content transparency, while the “Right to Repair” framework will make repair a more standard option for consumers and manufacturers. Packaging rules are also tight-ening, pushing reuse systems and more circular packaging design across value chains, and battery regulation timelines (including labelling and QR-enabled information) are accelerating data-rich cir-cular supply chains in strategic sectors like mobility and storage. As these measures mature, the most
significant change may be infrastructural: scaling reverse logistics, repair networks, secondary-mate-rial markets, and interoperable data standards so that circular options become cheaper and easier than disposal. The winners will be firms that redesign products and business models early, treating dura-bility, maintenance, and recovery as core performance metrics, not compliance add-ons.
As regulators ratchet up demands, the circular economy is set to move from one based largely on voluntary best practice to one framed by law. The EU has already demonstrated that if institutions stay the course, they can speed its development. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation will gradually introduce targeted product requirements as well as general rules around design and durability that manufacturers will need to comply with. It will also scale the use of tools such as Digital Product Passports that are vital to sharing product data and will improve the traceability, re-pairability, and transparency of recycled content. The “Right to Repair” will make repair the norm for consumers and producers alike, forcing business models to change.
Packaging rules are becoming stricter, requiring companies to shift to reuse systems and develop more circular packaging solutions. Acceleration of battery regulation requiring batteries to be clearly labeled and include QR-enabled information will spur data-rich, circular supply chains.
The biggest impact on infrastructure will come from initiatives to modernize. Reverse logistics, repair networks, and secondary materials markets all need to be scaled up to the task. To make that happen, we need interoperable data standards. Offering circular options at lower cost and with greater con-venience than disposal would enable long-term sustainability. If not, they should redesign their prod-ucts and business. Durability, maintenance, and recovery will be performance metrics and active de-sign features, not just compliance check marks.
Professor at the Department of Political Science at Roma Tre University, Italy. His research interests include energy economics, environmental sustainability, circular economy, waste management, transportation infrastructure, agricultural economics, public finance, Machine Learning experiments, and Artificial Neural Network analyses. He has vast experience in publications and reviews for top publishers like Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Springer, Sage, Emerald, Inderscience, etc. Moreover, he has published over 200 research articles in international journals (11,000+ citations and H-Index 61). He serves as an Editor, Associate Editor, Editorial Board member, and Reviewer for numerous journals. Also, he has been ranked in the World's Top 2% Scientists List published by Stanford University in 2021-2025.