Sustainability is still often framed as a trade-off. A cost to manage, a pressure to respond to, or a compliance exercise running alongside core business strategy. But that framing is starting to look increasingly outdated. What if the real issue is not the cost of acting, but the scale of value being lost by continuing with business as usual?
Recent analysis from Circle Economy, developed in collaboration with Deloitte, puts a striking figure on this question. Each year, an estimated €25.4 trillion in economic value is lost globally due to inefficiencies in how we design, use, and dispose of resources. That equates to roughly one third of global GDP, not through external shocks or market volatility, but through the everyday functioning of the linear economy.
From waste to value loss
The scale of the number is attention-grabbing, but the real shift lies in how the problem is defined. Rather than focusing purely on waste as an end-of-life issue, the analysis reframes it as a continuous loss of value throughout the entire lifecycle of products and materials.
Energy is routinely lost through inefficiency. Materials are under-utilised or downgraded. Products are discarded long before their functional life is over. Assets sit idle, generating no return. Significant volumes of food are produced but never consumed. These are not isolated issues; they are interconnected symptoms of a system that was not designed to optimise value over time.
A large proportion of these losses still occur at end of life, where products and materials that retain significant embedded value are simply disposed of rather than recovered or reused. However, focusing only on waste, risks missing the bigger picture. The real opportunity lies in addressing inefficiencies upstream, where design decisions, usage patterns, and business models determine how much value is created and retained in the first place.
Why circularity is moving into the mainstream
This is where the concept of the circular economy becomes increasingly relevant, not as a sustainability initiative, but as a strategic framework for improving performance.
Circularity is fundamentally about keeping products, materials, and assets in use for longer, extracting greater value from existing resources, and reducing dependence on finite inputs. When applied effectively, it has direct commercial implications. Organisations can lower material costs, reduce exposure to volatile supply chains, and unlock new revenue streams through reuse, repair, refurbishment, and service-based models.
What is changing is not just awareness, but intent. Circularity is moving beyond theory and into operational strategy, particularly in sectors where resource intensity, cost pressures, and regulatory expectations are converging.
A system challenge, not a single intervention
The scale of the opportunity also makes one thing clear. Incremental improvements will not be enough to close a €25 trillion gap.
Capturing this value requires coordinated change across entire systems. That includes how products are designed, how supply chains are structured, how materials are tracked, and how performance is measured. It also requires closer alignment between business, policy, and finance to enable new models to scale.
Importantly, it means moving beyond recycling as the primary solution. While recycling plays a role, it often recovers only a fraction of the original value. The greater gains lie further upstream, in designing out waste, increasing utilisation, and extending product lifecycles from the outset.
The gap between ambition and reality
Despite growing momentum, the global economy remains overwhelmingly linear. The majority of materials entering the system still come from virgin sources, and only a relatively small proportion is cycled back into productive use. This highlights a persistent gap between ambition and execution.
However, that gap also represents opportunity. As pressure builds from regulation, resource constraints, and stakeholder expectations, organisations that can rethink how value flows through their systems will be better positioned to adapt.
What this analysis ultimately highlights is a shift in how value is understood. Circularity is no longer just about minimising harm or meeting sustainability targets. It is increasingly about how effectively a system is designed to retain and generate value over time.
For businesses, the conversation is moving on. The focus is less on whether circularity is relevant and more on where it can deliver the greatest impact. That could sit in redesigning products, improving asset utilisation, rethinking supply chains, or developing entirely new business models that decouple growth from resource consumption.
The common thread is efficiency. A significant share of global value is currently lost not because it cannot be captured, but because systems are not set up to retain it.
Organisations that address this will not just reduce waste or emissions. They will build more resilient operations, strengthen their cost base, and position themselves more competitively in a resource-constrained world.
Read the full Circularity Gap Report 2026: The Value Gap, by Deloitte and Circular Economy here: CGR 2026 – Overview – Circularity Gap Report
If your organisation is bringing circularity to the forefront of your sustainability strategy and need some support, get in touch with the Shape Tomorrow team – hello@shapetomorrow.co.uk