The circular economy has a confidence problem

The procurement paradox

Past week, I joined Leadership Group 5 of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform, a working group that focuses on strengthening demand for circular products and services. One of the recurring themes is circular procurement: how public and private buyers can use procurement criteria, incentives and purchasing frameworks to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy.

The more I listened to the discussions, the more I realised that I was struggling with something.

Not because I disagree with the importance of procurement. Quite the opposite. Public procurement is one of the most powerful tools we have for steering markets. If governments and large organisations start asking different questions, suppliers will inevitably respond. Regulation matters, standards matter and incentives matter.

My question was different.

Many of the proposed solutions seemed to assume that buyers should become increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of circularity. They should learn how to evaluate circular performance, compare environmental impacts, understand material origins, assess repairability, consider future value retention and integrate all of this into their decision-making processes.

Do we expect this from any other innovation?

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered whether we ask this of any other innovation.

When smartphones entered the market, consumers were not expected to develop new frameworks for evaluating digital ecosystems. When Netflix appeared, people did not first study the economics of content distribution before abandoning DVDs. When online banking emerged, customers were not asked to understand the architecture of financial technology before deciding whether to use it.

In each of these examples, innovators carried most of the burden. Products and services became so intuitive, attractive and useful that adoption followed naturally. The customer did not need to become an expert before making the switch.

Yet discussions around the circular economy sometimes seem to assume the opposite. We regularly ask how buyers can become better at recognising circular value, while spending far less time discussing how circular businesses can make that value immediately recognisable.

Knowledge doesn't remove uncertainty

Perhaps there is a reason for that.

Many circular solutions still require buyers to make a leap of faith. They are confronted with unfamiliar materials, unconventional supply chains, different ownership models or environmental claims that can be difficult to verify. Procurement criteria certainly help to structure those decisions, but they do not automatically remove uncertainty.

A procurement manager does not wake up in the morning thinking about circularity. Like every professional, they are trying to make sound decisions, reduce risk and avoid unpleasant surprises. The challenge is therefore not only whether a circular product performs better, but whether choosing it feels like a safe and defensible decision.

This made me realise that confidence may be one of the most overlooked challenges in the circular economy. Buyers need confidence that a product will last, that a supplier will still be there in five years, that environmental claims are credible and that colleagues or clients will support the decision rather than question it afterwards.

Confidence can be designed

That insight has also shaped the way I think about the May Again pilot I am currently preparing.

Our objective is not to provide buyers with ever more information or increasingly complex datasets. Instead, we are exploring whether traceability, object identities and digital product passports can reduce uncertainty by making an object's story, origin and journey visible. Rather than asking people to become circular economy experts, perhaps we should ask how products themselves can communicate their value more effectively.

After all, confidence is rarely created by information alone. It grows when people understand what they are looking at, where it comes from and why they can rely on it.

Beyond procurement

None of this means procurement is the wrong approach. On the contrary, regulation, market incentives and procurement frameworks remain essential if we want to accelerate the transition towards a circular economy.

At the same time, I believe entrepreneurs, designers and manufacturers share an equally important responsibility. Instead of transferring complexity to buyers, we should be reducing it through better products, better communication and better experiences.

If circularity is going to scale, it will certainly be helped by smarter procurement. But I suspect the real breakthrough will come when circular products become so trustworthy, desirable and easy to choose that they no longer need to be explained in the first place.