The Great Circularity mismatch: Why global metrics miss India’s story

Today, 8th October, is World Circular Textiles Day – the fifth one – and hence a recent addition to the numerous such days in the year. On this day, I would like to look at how Circularity is looked at in our world, and why it fails to reflect the realities of the value-chain in emerging economies like that of India.

An earlier article I wrote on the basics of circularity can also be read here - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-blistering-barnacles-circular-economy-ashwin-kak-bnvtc

To begin with, every January, the Circularity Gap Report makes headlines. The 2025 edition declared the world is only 6.9% circular - and even if we recycled all recyclable materials, the theoretical ceiling is only about 25%, unless we also cut material demand. (You can read this Circularity Gap report here - https://www.circularity-gap.world/updates-collection/global-circularity-rate-fell-to-6-9---despite-growing-recycling)

It’s a sharp statistic, but it frames circularity through a narrow lens: one that privileges formal recycling flows and misses what India and much of the Global South already do every day - extend product life first through re-design, repair, reuse, and jugad.

Meanwhile, material extraction is set to keep climbing; the OECD projects primary material use will double by 2060, embedding decades of linear infrastructure and consumption lock-in unless we change course. (This OECD report is avialable here - https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/global-material-resources-outlook-to-2060_9789264307452-en.html)

And the waste tide is rising: the World Bank estimates 3.40 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste per year by 2050, with at least 33% mismanaged today - precisely the space where the informal sector labours (often safely reducing that mismanagement) yet remains invisible to global statistics.

Lived circularity is what these metrics don’t see

Most global frameworks treat circularity as a company or plant-level exercise. EMF’s Circulytics and related indicator sets are useful for boardrooms, but they track enablers/outcomes inside firms, not the urban ecosystems of resale/repair that power circularity in cities and towns of India. The result is also that policy and capital chase what’s easiest to count, not what’s most impactful in context. (The EMF report is available here - https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/resources/circulytics/resources)

Step inside a Material / Textile Recovery Facility and you’ll see skilled men and women sorting tons of clothes into resale, upcycling, downcycling and recycling feedstock; the economics of grading, quality checks, storage and livelihoods woven into every kilogram diverted from your nearest landfill. Travel through India’s multiple recycling / downcycling clusters or our capital city Delhi’s kabadiwala lanes and you’ll find dense networks that capture value from textiles, plastics, paper, e-waste and metals at city scale.

None of this boosts the global “6.9%” figure. A digital product passport pilot in Berlin earns a chapter; a sari-to-quilt home-based upcycler in a Borivalli or Dahisar puts nothing in this ledger though. 

This is the great mismatch: metrics that erase “Global South” realities, even as they are the foundation of circularity.

Should we move beyond just recycling, into aspects of “Value Retention”?

So, essentially if our metric cannot “see” a cobbler, a sari-quilt upcycler, or an e-waste refurbisher, it cannot see India; or for that matter the reality of the developing world in general.

What we need is a complementary lens alongside recycling rates - one that captures how much value we retain before materials even reach end-of-pipe recycling.

Think of it as a Value Retention Index (VRI):

• How much life is extended through re-design and material innovations in the existing value-chains of textiles and apparels?
• How much economic value is recaptured through repair, reuse and refurbishment?
• How many livelihoods are sustained in these circular ecosystems?
• How much carbon is avoided by reducing the usage of fresh/virgin materials?

Not a complex academic tool, but a decision-useful frame that shifts capital and policy attention to the biggest emerging economy / developing country lever: keeping products in productive use.

Here are two more such articles on lived circularity that you may read here -

1) Circular by Culture: How Indian traditions pre-empt the modern sustainability playbook - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/circular-culture-how-indian-traditions-pre-empt-modern-kak-scr--2xlzc

2) Circular Living: One fix at a time - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/circular-living-one-fix-time-ashwin-kak-scr--jdtjc

To summarise…

Recycling is necessary. But value retention is primary.

Circularity in India and the developing economies is not a corporate KPI - it is a lived practice. So, if our metrics can’t see cobblers, kabadiwalas, local upcyclers, and women Self Help Group (SHG)-led recovery facilities - then they can’t see us.

We believe that better recycling give us a “moral license to consume”, which further leads to higher throughput, eventually leading to global circularity stagnating around a low single digit. Without a mix of actions enabling material innovations, re-design for life extensions and demand stabilisation up front, recycling improvements can paradoxically only entrench this linearity we are trying to solve for in the first place!

Hence, it is time to stop importing dashboards that erase our realities - and start exporting a measurement system our world actually needs.

Read more about the idea behind World Circular Textiles Day here - https://worldcirculartextilesday.com/