ISO 59000 is a series of international circular economy standards, designed to provide consensus-based guidelines for implementation without fragmentation. Learn more in this exclusive interview with Professor Martin Charter, Head of UK Delegation/Expert for ISO – TC 323 (Circular Economy), as featured in Circular Economy Magazine.
Fragmentation, differing definitions, and a lack of practical guidance threaten to hinder organizations around the world from embedding circularity into their practices, operations, and products.
The solution? Internationally applicable standards that can provide consensus on what the circular economy looks like, and clearly presented guidance that’s grounded in practicality.
We spoke with Professor Martin Charter, Director at The Centre for Sustainable Design, Chair of CED/1 Committee (Circular Economy) at British Standards Institution, and Head of UK Delegation/Expert for ISO – International Organization for Standardization – TC 323 (Circular Economy), about developing the ISO 59000 series, how these standards benefit organizations stepping into the circular economy space, and ways they can be improved to make a tangible impact.
Before the ISO 59000 series was published in 2024, I was a member of the panel that produced BS 8001, “Framework for implementing the principles of the circular economy,” through the British Standards Institution. Published in 2017, this was the first organizational standard on circularity.
Following that, there was international interest in developing an international standard based on BS 8001.
When a new topic of significant international significance is identified, a proposal is prepared by a sponsoring country that will provide a secretariat and submitted to ISO. If positively received by ISO and the international community, a technical committee is established, which is the warehouse for the development of specific standards related to the topic in question.
In 2018, ISO launched TC 323 with a French chair and secretariat to take forward standardization related to the circular economy. ISO has around 180 countries as members worldwide, including Canada and the UK, and also smaller countries like Rwanda and Jamaica.
The development process of the three core standards in the ISO 59000 series started in separate working groups. Other standards have been developed after that, and now, there are seven standards in the series.
The first standard, ISO 59004, “Circular economy — Vocabulary, principles and guidance for implementation,” was formed under working group one. This primarily focused on listing common terms and definitions associated with the circular economy, and also core concepts. The second standard, ISO 59010, “Circular economy — Guidance on the transition of business models and value networks,” was focused around business-oriented strategies, and the third one, ISO 59020, “Circular economy — Measuring and assessing circularity performance,” around measurement and metrics.
The fourth, ISO/TR 59032, “Circular economy — Review of existing value networks,” is focused on case studies, which is a bit more formational.
Working group number five formed the fifth standard, ISO 59040, which focused on product circularity data sheets. How data is shared, what data is shared, and how you manage that is going to become more and more of an issue in terms of international trade, and that’s going to be particularly applicable for something called digital product passports (DPP) that are emerging in Europe. CEN/TC 473—the European standardization group on circular economy—is also picking up “information sharing” in a working group as a precursor to DPP standardization.
The sixth standard, ISO 59014, “Environmental management and circular economy — Sustainability and traceability of the recovery of secondary materials — Principles, requirements and guidance,” is around secondary materials.
Published in 2026, there is now a seventh standard, ISO/TR 59031, “Circular economy — Performance-based approach — Analysis of case studies,” and two new standards under development, ISO/AWI 59001, “Circular economy management systems — Requirements,” and ISO/AWI 59011, “Circular economy — Organizing a value network towards circularity.”
So there are seven published standards, and the first three standards have now moved into a process of revision; two were published with no revision process, and now two new standards are starting. There will also likely be other standards that will be developed. It’s not the end of it.
As one industry veteran said, “we really are at the beginning of a process on circular economy standardization.” We’re right back in the 1990s, in a sense, where the ISO 14000 environmental management system started, so there could be another 20 years of circular economy standards development.
For many companies, they may have heard about the circular economy, but they really don’t know how to operationalize it, so something that provides some guidance on the terms, something that provides real, clear guidance on how to do it, is what is needed. I think the current ISO standards partially do this. Within the next iteration, they will be much stronger from the practitioner’s point of view.
I think there is growing interest in standardization, particularly as the European Commission is driving circular economy policy. That’s where the legislation is emerging, and, as a result, many countries see more regulations impacting product requirements, and therefore, circularity will be part of access to the European market. In some countries in Asia, they want to use these standards for certification. However, none of these ISO 59000 standards are designed for certification or third-party verification. They’re organizational guidance standards, rather than product-based standards.
But I know from previous experience, despite stating that the published ISO 59000 series (to date) are guidance standards, you will get some countries and standardization bodies that will start to create certification for this, if they see a market opportunity.
There is a whole other issue around being really clear about what you mean by standards, because it may mean different things to different people.
For example, we’re doing a lot of work in the fashion and clothing sector because we see that there’s been no real effective circularity regulation, and there’s a whole stack of regulation coming in from Europe. When we started to talk to companies about standardization in this sector, they didn’t fully understand ISO or CEN standardization. They considered standards to relate to voluntary codes of practice, corporate processes, or serve as an internal tool; they didn’t fully understand independent international, consensus-based standardization processes.
Bottom line, the circular economy is not going backward; it’s only going forward in terms of policy, standardization, and national plans. Some of those national plans are a little bit thin, but even if it starts that way, countries have to go through a process to publish a strategy—that’s how institutionalization works. And, if a country is going to publish a national plan, clarity over terms, definitions, and guidance is imperative. That’s where standards come in.
In a complex area like the circular economy, where there are different viewpoints and different perspectives, the fact that standards have been published is a big success, as it is a huge, complicated exercise.
There were different chairs from different countries involved in this process. Different chairs have different styles and experiences, and you have to try to get consensus from almost 180 countries. The big challenge is that some countries that weren’t as advanced in circularity thought circularity was another word for recycling; this is a mindset that still exists out there in the world in some places and organizations. There are a lot of countries and individuals who engage in this process that don’t necessarily have the holistic picture. They’ve not read the books, they’ve not read the reports, and they haven’t got the experience of trying to make circularity happen in organizations, so that was a big challenge.
One of the other challenges is that countries have different perspectives, different positions on circularity politically, even economically. It’s quite difficult to get people to agree, particularly on terms, which becomes a big issue, big debates, on what “regenerative” even means, for example. This is tough enough in physical meetings, when you have people there face-to-face, but in the virtual world, this is even trickier. ISO TC323 activities had to continue during COVID-19 over Zoom and Teams meetings, when we were learning the ropes of managing virtual meetings. It became incredibly difficult to run and engage in the process. This led to elongated discussions and delays. Finally, ISO published the three core standards in the summer of 2024.
Due to the technical nature and complexity of the standards development process—and perhaps the slow nature of development—business was engaged in developing the standards at the beginning, but gradually walked away from the process. So, there was less and less practical input, which resulted in a lot of consultants and academics writing the texts.
The real issue with this is that a lot of the academics are really interested in the concepts and the systems thinking—and that’s great—but when you get down to a company level, questions like “what do we have to do first?” and “how do we drive down costs?” begin to emerge. For a lot of the companies, if they have a successful business model, they don’t want to change that to a circular model, but there are a lot of academics writing about changing business models to become more circular, without understanding the practical realities. A lot of companies are just not interested in changing their business models unless there are major opportunities or threats.
It’s a big thing to shift from a linear model to a circular model. It’s a complicated, difficult job, and it takes time. You’ve got to involve multifunctional teams, you’ve got to tackle internal language and communications, you’ve got to get senior management to buy in, all of these things. And for companies to take this seriously, they need to see the drivers. What is driving them to change? Is it external drivers, such as regulation? Customers asking more questions? Pressure over critical raw materials? Or is it those very unusual companies that step out and say, “it’s part of our vision, it’s vision-based and purpose-based.” So there needs to be a driver for this change.
I’ll bring back the example of the fashion and clothing sector, because the policy and regulatory changes to drive circularity in Europe are becoming a bigger and bigger issue. For example, you may be running a 57-person clothing company in Milan and have never employed an environmental manager. Maybe they employ a quality manager. Maybe they don’t even have a quality manager—they have a general manager, and suddenly the general manager will need to start to pick up circularity. Or maybe they’ll need an intern to work on it, one day a week, or five days a month. How do you start to bring this into the organization, especially as new European regulations are on the horizon?
Larger companies have more resources they can employ than smaller organizations, including sustainability directors, and they even have specific people picking up circularity. So, many organizations, small and large, need guidance on how to start the process very practically. Those in standardization development need to look at this from the point of view of the company—this does not always happen!
The other element that we picked up from some depth work we did on product circularity is that, even for organizations that have sustainability departments, circularity was slightly to the side and not fully integrated. Circularity has still been managed as a separate issue, because it’s a bit new, which means that shifting from working with recyclers on materials recycling to thinking about repair and reuse is a new issue for many companies.
A very basic point that I’ve learned is that companies will generally sell a product into the chain in some form. They’ll sell it to a retailer, an intermediary, whether it’s business-to-business, and actually, they never have a full understanding of the use phase of the product, e.g., if the product has been repaired, or if it’s in the second or third life, because the product is with the customer. In the linear economy, you don’t need to collect data on this; in the circular economy, you do. So data on reuse, repair, etc., is just not available. Companies really don’t know how to manage this, and they certainly don’t have the data on it. It’s tough; you also have to change your organizational model to do this.
I think what companies need is very practical guidance—what they need to do, how they need to do it, and how to prioritize with limited teams.
The danger is that if the management standards aren’t revised to incorporate more practicality, they’ll be seen as quite high-level and won’t really be used. Maybe consultants will buy them, but you won’t get the companies buying and using them, and they may actually develop their own standards, resulting in further fragmentation.
So what’s now happening is that three core standards of the ISO 59000 series are going into a revision process. Those standards—let’s call them version two—will be published in 2028. So they’re out there, they’re published, but there’s still work to be done. That’s where things are at the moment.
I think the fact that a revision process for the three core standards is starting is good. The follow-up research completed by the ISO TC 323 secretariat indicated that there needs to be more practical guidance in the standards, not just conceptual thinking; the chair has heard that, and others have heard that. We hope this feedback will be listened to by the chairs of the working groups and those experts involved in the standards development revision process, and that more practical guidance will be incorporated, because that is what is needed.
In terms of new developments, CEN established CEN/TC 473 a few years ago, focused on circular economy standardization in Europe, which is very active, and also the revision process of the BS 8001:2017—the first standard on implementing circularity in organizations—is now starting within the UK. Chatham House, the think tank, is monitoring all the publications of national circular economy plans and strategies around the world. There are now over a hundred plans and strategies published globally; some leading countries are on the third iteration of their strategies, and some are just at the early stages, but making a commitment, so there are different levels of learnings from implementation. A lot of countries are taking the circular economy seriously now.
One of the key points about the ISO standards is they should offer guidance on how to implement circularity into organizations. They are not built around how you drive a circular economy at an economic or societal level. There’s often confusion in the language among people who have been involved in the standardization process about the context of the standards if they don’t come from the business world. Even in the standardization community, they get very confused about the context and the terms. Some were thinking about the circular economy in terms of driving a national circular economy. Well, these standards are not designed to do that. They’re designed to provide guidance to support organizations and increase their circularity.
Personally, as mentioned previously, I see the European Union as the driver of circular economy policy worldwide. New policy is emerging, and it’s not just policy—it’s regulations. For example, in the textiles and clothing sector, there are likely to be requirements to increase the durability or repairability of your garments, for example, and those regulations will be passed down through the global supply chain.
Suppliers—within and outside of Europe—will have to adapt to that, and organizations in different sectors are going to need to prepare for these regulations. The automotive and electronic sectors are more sensitized to some of these issues because they’ve had different regulations already for several decades. But sectors like clothing, textiles, and furniture haven’t had this sort of preparation. A lot of these issues are going to be entirely new to people; even the language will be new.
This is where standards can be really useful around shared understanding of terminology. You might have a French government office that is practicing green public procurement, which requests a certain level of recycled content and repairability, in staff uniforms, for example. How do you define recycled content and repairability to keep it consistent? Having a standard that has some sort of definitions will help suppliers—often outside of Europe—to gain clarity on terminology. While the ISO 59000 series is not product-based, it can help companies bring circularity into new and existing business models, processes and operations, and product development, contributing to a broader understanding of the circular economy in the organization.
This story was featured in Circular Economy Magazine:
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