I made a mistake the first time I built a circularity strategy.
The target was already there:
“Circular by 2050, by closing the loops.”
Ambitious. Visible. Approved.
So I did what you would expect.
I started building the strategy.
With a lot of ambition and energy, I approached it from several angles.
There was progress.
But mostly on my side.
It took me a while to understand why.
We had never actually defined what “circular by 2050” meant for us.
And as long as the definition stays vague, everyone can interpret it differently.
- To some, it meant recycled content in our products.
- To others, recycling our products at end-of-life.
- To many, “closing the loop.”
Until someone asked:
“What does closing the loop actually mean for us?”
And the room went quiet.
That’s when I realized the real problem.
We had a target.
Or we thought we did.
In reality, we had a vision.
And turning that vision into an actual target was the first task — the one I’d skipped.
So we went back.
Before touching timelines or roadmaps, we did the unglamorous work.
We brought the whole value chain to the table — design, procurement, production, sales, end-of-life — and defined what circularity actually meant:
- For our products.
- For our business.
- For our context.
Only then did “circular by [year]” become something we could actually plan toward, measure, and reach.
The lesson stayed with me.
A lot of 2040 and 2050 circularity targets sound impressive.
But some are still visions, not targets.
A direction everyone nods to, but nobody has translated into something concrete.
A target you haven’t defined isn’t a strategy.
It’s a hope with a date on it.
So here’s the uncomfortable question:
Does your organization’s circularity target have a clear, shared definition behind it?
Or is it still a word that everyone interprets in their own way?