Building a world designed around circularity RE : SETTING THE STANDARD Special articles from CSA Group and The Ellen MacArthur Foundation FEATURING INTERVIEWS WITH • ChopValue • Circular Innovation Council • City of Toronto • Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute • GRT • KORE Outdoors • Martin Charter on ISO 59000 • Ten Lives Festivals Circular Economy Magazine June 2026, Issue 02 CAN $45 / US $45A better world needs what you’ve built. We’ll help it find you.Let’s build your audience together. sparxpg.com/contact Our purpose is to help cleantech and waste-to-resource innovators like you build and reach the audiences that drive business growth. From strategy to execution, we’re a marketing agency that exists to accelerate awareness and adoption of solutions reshaping industry. A Canadian biogas facility transforming organic waste into renewable energy. These anaerobic digesters close the agricultural loop, producing both clean power and nutrient-rich fertilizer.40 58 60 28 44 22 48 34 4 CIRCULAR ECONOMY MAGAZINE CONTENTS18 BUILDING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR A CIRCULAR ECONOMY: WHY STANDARDS MATTER By: Michael Leering, Director of Environment & Business Excellence Standards at CSA Group 40 KORE OUTDOORS Repairing our relationship with product longevity 44 TEN LIVES FESTIVALS Sparking a movement to empower people and regenerate the land 48 CRADLE TO CRADLE PRODUCTS INNOVATION INSTITUTE Providing a framework to transform circular ambition into verified action 22 CITY OF TORONTO Guiding a city-wide circular economy transition 54 MARTIN CHARTER ON ISO 59000 Collaborating internationally on a series of circular guidelines 28 CHOPVALUE Transforming a common utensil into materials under key manufacturing standards 58 GRT Digging deep into regenerative waste and resource management 34 CIRCULAR INNOVATION COUNCIL Reinforcing the circular economy as a foundational strategy 60 THE ELLEN MACARTHUR FOUNDATION: SCALING CIRCULAR ECONOMY IMPLEMENTATION A conversation with Danielle Holly, Executive Lead, North America 8 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 11 STORIES OF IMPACT: CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN ACTION Discover new standards of circular action with these stories FEATURES 32 HOW STANDARDS ACTUALLY EMERGE 52 WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS CIRCLED THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY STANDARDS JOURNEY AND WHERE WE ARE NOW 13 CIRCULAR ECONOMY EVENTS: CONNECTION, COLLABORATION, IMPACT Discover upcoming circular economy learning and networking opportunities 66 CIRCULAR ECONOMY STANDARDS RESOURCES FOR PURPOSE-DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONS Take unified circular economy action with these resources JUNE 2026 • ISSUE 02 5 ISSUE 2As a member of the purpose-driven community, we’re proud of our certifications, recognitions, and partnerships. CONTRIBUTORS Market Your Circular Economy Story LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS GUEST AUTHORS Michael Leering, Director of Environment & Business Excellence Standards at CSA Group Danielle Holly, Executive Lead, North America at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation CITY OF TORONTO Meaghan Davis, Manager of Incubation & Design CHOPVALUE Alison Lee, Global Marketing Director CIRCULAR INNOVATION COUNCIL Jo-Anne St. Godard, Executive Director KORE OUTDOORS Kevin Pennock, Co-Founder and Executive Director TEN LIVES FESTIVALS Louis De Jaeger, Networking and Regeneration CRADLE TO CRADLE PRODUCTS INNOVATION INSTITUTE Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer MARTIN CHARTER ON ISO 59000 Martin Charter, Head of UK Delegation/Expert for ISO - International Organization for Standardization - TC 323 (Circular Economy) GRT Deanna Woods, Director of People and Product Development This issue helps advance progress on the following United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Support Circular Economy Magazine Visit circulareconomymag.com to help support future issues of Circular Economy Magazine through exclusive sponsorship opportunities, or purchase copies with our special 10+2 bundle, which places circular economy inspiration in the hands of tomorrow’s leaders. Sparx Publishing Group is a marketing agency on a mission to raise circular economy awareness and accelerate adoption. We can help your circular economy story reach audiences far and wide. Contact us at sparxpg.com/contact for a free consultation. Sparx would like to acknowledge that we work on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples – Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō, and Səl ̓ ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy ̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations; the Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo) Nation; the Kwikwetlem (Coquitlam) Nation; the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples (Toronto); the Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikani (Peigan), Stoney Nakoda, and Tsuut’ina (Sarcee) as well as the Cree, Sioux, and the Saulteaux bands of the Ojibwa peoples (Medicine Hat); and the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie (Windsor). Circular Economy Magazine ISSN 2819-2273 (Print) ISSN 2819-2281 (Online) June 2026, Issue 2 PUBLISHER Sparx Publishing Group Inc. sparxpg.com For information about advertising rates and placements, contact us at mtwb@sparxpg.com. All photo credits to the organizations. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hamish Khamisa EDITORS Libby Shabada Michelle Baleka ART DIRECTOR Elisabeth Choi PROJECT MANAGER Alexandra Nikitina PROJECT COORDINATOR Ken Yeung PHOTO EDITOR Sonia Lau 6 CIRCULAR ECONOMY MAGAZINE September 14–16, 2026 Fairmont Le Château Frontenac Québec City, QC | Canada Join the conversation at the 2026 Canadian EPR Forum Promise to Proof: Delivering results through EPR Presented by Canadian Stewardship Conference Register now at https://eprforum.ca/register Attend the go-to forum for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) along- side hundreds of thought leaders, practitioners, experts, and delegates from Canada and around the world. Learn how EPR can fast-track circular economy adoption, exchange insights into the latest developments, and discover results-driven approaches and emerging solutions.Letter from the Editor How many people does it take to change a lightbulb? Just over a hundred years ago, the device at the heart of that joke became the origin of one of the most damaging ideas in modern economic history: planned obsolescence. In December 1924, the world’s largest lightbulb manufacturers gath- ered in Geneva and conspired to restrict bulb lifespans from 2,500 hours to 1,000. With the flip of a switch, the Phoebus Cartel—named, with no apparent irony, after the Greek god of light—repurposed engineers who had spent careers making bulbs last longer to ensure they failed sooner. The cartel lasted about 15 years. The idea has lasted a century. The impact, incalculably longer. Fast forward to today, and the real damage went beyond the billions of unnecessary products manufactured, consumed, and discarded. Most tragic was the cultural and economic normalization of designing things to fail to the point that it became acceptable standard practice. One decision in one room in Geneva created a template that industries adopted, and nobody questioned for a century. The lesson of the lightbulb offers a compelling strategy for advancing circularity. The ingredients of consensus, measurement, and enforcement that kept a 1,000-hour bulb on shelves for almost 100 years have also been shown to drive positive change. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) created the green building market. The GHG Protocol led to corporate carbon accounting. The key difference is the intent. The power that standards command is why we chose them as the lens for this issue, not because they’re glamorous, but precisely because they are the invisible mechanism through which the circular economy either scales or stalls. Consider the emerging category of reusable food containers. What goes through the mind of a guest getting served a soda at a stadium or a pizza at a mall food court? Does the fact that the container is reused matter? In order for the answer to be no—and for the operator to confi- dently offer it—numerous dots need to be connected, from wash temperatures and safety thresholds to replacement cycles and return logistics. Without that invisible standard, operators can’t manage risk, consumers can’t trust the container, and single-use remains the default. The work being done by PR3 and CSA Group, for example, to turn practitioner knowledge into binational reusable packaging standards, shows what’s possible when the system works. Across this issue, an important pattern emerges: the leaders and entrepreneurs advancing circularity in Canada and around the world aren’t waiting for formal standards to be written. They’re proving what works in repair, soil regeneration, material reclas- sification, municipal coordination, third-party certification, and event spaces, and in doing so, they are generating the evidence that will inform what those standards ultimately need to contain. I am simultaneously humbled and ecstatic to see the incredible lineup of organizations featured in this issue: City of Toronto, ChopValue, Circular Innovation Council, GRT, KORE Outdoors, and Ten Lives Festivals are writing the playbook through practice. CSA Group and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation bring additional depth as guest authors, contributing their perspectives directly in their own voice. We also spoke with Martin Charter, who offers a candid insider view of how the ISO 59000 series, the first international circular economy standards, was developed and where it needs to go next. And for me personally, it was reading the work of the founders of the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute that first introduced me to circular design thinking almost 20 years ago. Their presence in these pages is a full-circle moment in the truest sense. As much as has been done to shift the circular economy to becoming “the economy,” there is still a long road ahead. International circular economy standards, like ISO 59000 or the Global Circularity Protocol, are crucial but early steps. Fortunately, as evidenced by the organizations and programs featured in this issue, the opportunities, signals, and momentum driving circularity are real. And, most importantly, the world can move far more quickly and at a greater scale in 2026 than it could in 1924. Canada, in particular, has a chance to be the global bridge builder, sitting between a US market that’s lagging, an EU market that’s already mandating circularity through trade, and an Asia-Pacific region intent on driving it forward. The window to shape these standards is now. For our part, choosing to continue with the magazine was intentional. Based on the overwhelming positive response toward our first issue and our purpose to accelerate awareness and adoption of the circular economy, we wanted to embrace the challenges and opportunities this medium presents. Our commitment is to improve with every issue, iteratively, by thinking through every design decision, from paper stock to end of life, with circularity in mind, and to hold ourselves to the same standard we ask of our contributors. A century ago, a cartel in Geneva used standards to dim innovation. Unwittingly, however, they also handed the world the lightbulb moment it needs to advance the circular economy: Circularity is a design choice. The same architecture of consensus, measurement, verification, and enforcement is exactly what’s required to scale what the trailblazers in these pages are already proving is possible. Wherever you may be on your journey to advance a circular future, my hope is that as you read the stories in this issue, you consider a different question: How many lightbulbs does it take to change a person? Hamish Khamisa Editor-in-Chief 8 CIRCULAR ECONOMY MAGAZINENext >