Editor’s Note
This guest Business Tip on Circular Adoption is written by Rachel Sheila Kan, circularity expert and founder of Real Circularity. It draws on applied experience working with businesses on circular adoption inside real commercial and operational constraints. Rather than quick fixes, this piece explores why circular progress works best as an iterative, connected process.
For circular adoption, there is no silver bullet...
In our work at Real Circularity, we help businesses and professionals connect with a simple truth. Work on sustainable circularity must be iterative. It sits within a wider, connected system of change, where even a small shift interacts with the whole.
Many people, when they first meet me, ask whether what I do is similar to Depop or Vinted. Some assume it is recycling. These questions are understandable. Yet they miss the wider picture. Circular adoption is not a single platform, tool, or reuse scheme. It is an industrial, systems, and business shift, just as much as it involves reuse technologies or recycling systems.
At Real Circularity, we spend time reducing the sense of overwhelm that often surrounds this topic.
The reality is that circular adoption is deeply interconnected. Our role is to expose each part of the system and show how it interlocks. I often describe it as a three-dimensional jigsaw. Each piece has a place. When you try to force one in, like a frustrated three-year-old, it simply does not fit.
I remember completing a jigsaw as a child that was essentially a photograph of baked beans. Maddening. For puzzles like that, progress only comes with patience, placing pieces one by one, slowly seeing the picture emerge.
Circular adoption works in much the same way...
No single intervention acts as a silver bullet. A solution cannot be judged in isolation as good or bad without stepping back to see how it connects to the wider system. We refer to this as learning to zoom out.
We encourage professionals and businesses to build that capability. The ability to zoom in on one element and examine its detail, and at the same time zoom out to view the bigger picture, the image on the jigsaw box you are working towards. Only then can you assess whether that piece truly belongs where you are trying to place it.
The challenge is that professionals are often responsible for only one piece of the puzzle. Businesses, too, may focus on a single jigsaw inside a much larger set of interconnected ones. This is why circular adoption requires strong systems thinking and careful architecture.
That does not mean brands and businesses cannot act...
They can, and they should. Progress comes from connecting with the right network of solution providers and designing systems that fit the organisation. Done well, this creates streamlined pathways that deliver strong commercial returns and, in many cases, place minimal additional pressure on internal teams.
We do this by partnering with specialist providers and matching best-fit solutions to each business context. Missing jigsaw pieces begin to click into place. In some cases, our consultancy role complements existing suppliers, which removes internal friction. Employees do not need to worry about cost centres. Their role is simply to help connect the pieces.
That is how progress accelerates, with more finesse and less frustration.
Let’s architect the transition.
How We Support Businesses with Circular Adoption
We built Real Circularity because applying circularity requires more than theory. It requires translation into real operational constraints, organisational culture, and commercial goals.
At the consultancy level, we support organisations to:
- Identify value-creation pathways, including new revenue, efficiencies, and waste reduction
- Design business models that work in practice
- Create internal permission for innovation
- Build phased transition plans anchored in ROI
If you would like to explore what this could look like for your business, you can book a strategy conversation here:
https://bookus.page/Simple/Rachel
Alongside this work, many individuals want to deepen their own skills. People move into sustainability roles, reshape their job scope, or build new internal capability. This is where the Academy and Real Circularity 101 support personal development.
You can explore the Real Circularity suite of education, tools, and inspiration here:
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