Design for Circularity helps policymakers move beyond recycling by focusing on upstream design decisions that shape sustainable value chains and industrial transformation.
Most policy efforts to advance the circular economy focus on the end of a product’s lifecycle. While 75 national circular economy roadmaps have been launched since 1999, they often stop at waste management and recycling. Yet, the majority of a product’s environmental impacts are determined at the design stage. The most critical material, technological, and systemic decisions happen upstream in value chains: what materials go into a smartphone, whether it is designed to be repairable, or how a city sets its building codes. As research has pointed out, current circular economy strategies overwhelmingly underperform when it comes to design, governance and systemic coordination.
Advancing the transition to circular economies has been recognised as a vital response to the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion. But with the current approach, circular economy policies fall short of their transformative potential.
How can we start shifting our attention to the upstream stages of value chains, where most resource savings can be achieved through “fit for circular purpose” policies? How can policymakers be equipped with the right tools and capacities to coordinate, lead and initiate the cross-sectoral collaboration necessary for this shift?
That is the premise of Design for Circularity, a joint project between UNIDO and Demos Helsinki, running until December 2026.
Building capacity through policy toolkit and training material
The project develops a practical toolkit and training material to help policymakers recognise and introduce upstream design interventions in their work.
- Toolkit: By presenting concrete case examples, relevant tools and key capacities recommendations, it helps government entities identify gaps in their approach and devise interventions to achieve systemic circular efforts in their own context.
- Training: Through tailor-made programmes and context-adaptive capacity-building sessions, it aims to strengthen policymakers’ capabilities, ownership and agency in leading the circular transition.
The UNIDO project is piloted in Zambia and Kenya, where there is growing interest in circular transitions in the face of international policy shifts, especially those related to the EU’s product sustainability regulations. The goal is two-fold: 1) reorienting circularity as a central development priority instead of a niche environmental concern, and 2) demonstrating how upstream policymaking in circularity can influence society and economy.
Approaching the circular economy with Humble Governance
We aim to broaden the idea of what circular economy policies can be. Circularity is more than environmental goals. When implemented properly, it can offer significant economic and social benefits, including job creation, competitiveness, and societal long-term resilience. Achieving this broader vision of circularity requires a different approach to policymaking. An approach that is collaborative, consensus-based and grounded in real contexts.
Effective policy cannot be designed in isolation. Instead, it must be co-created with the actors who use, implement and are affected by it. This means designing tools, infrastructures and processes that work across ministries, especially in politically polarised contexts and diverse governance traditions across the Global South. Our Humble Governance model can achieve just that.
Looking ahead
If policymakers continue treating the circular economy as a recycling issue, they risk locking in extractive models for decades. If, instead, they strengthen their upstream capacity, circularity can become a cornerstone of long-term economic strategy that stimulates innovation, industrial development, and sustainability. That is the value proposition of Design for Circularity.