Circular ≠ recycling. You know that.

But does your organization too? And what is that costing you?

Since I switched to circular economy, I noticed something I couldn’t unsee.

Almost every time I said “circular,” the person across from me — a customer, a colleague, a partner — heard one thing:

Recycling.

Not reuse.
Not repair.
Not remanufacturing.
Not designing the product differently in the first place.

Recycling.

Almost every conversation needed a round of clarification first.

It cost time, energy — and, honestly, some nerves on both sides. 🙂

Over time, I understood why.

Recycling is the most familiar part of circularity.

It has the infrastructure, the targets, the metrics, the marketing — decades of head start.

When most people picture circularity, they picture a material going into a bin and coming back as something new.

It’s the image we’ve all been given.

But there is a hidden cost to the equation:

circular = recycling

The cost of missed opportunities.

The cost of conversations that never get past the definition.

The cost of circularity becoming another source of fatigue.

Because when “circular” means “recycling,” we have already narrowed the conversation to one option.

And we may never ask:

These questions can lead to fundamentally different strategies — and potentially very different economic and environmental outcomes.

Recycling absolutely belongs in circularity.

But circularity is much bigger than recycling.

That’s why I’ve come to believe that language is part of the work — not a side issue.

The words we use shape the questions we ask.

And the questions we ask shape the decisions we make.

Precise words lead to better questions.
Better questions lead to different decisions.

That may sound like a small distinction.

But if the starting definition already limits the options you consider, it can have consequences far beyond the conversation itself.

So I’m curious:

How do you deal with the “circular = recycling” assumption in your own conversations?