Which 10 brands have embraced circular business models?
A circular business model aims to keep products and materials useful for longer through repair, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling. It also asks a commercial question: can a company earn revenue from maintaining what already exists, rather than relying only on the sale of new products?
The following 10 brands have introduced significant shifts in their product design processes, client service methods, and used merchandise recovery strategies. None of them achieves full circularity. Nevertheless, their journeys illustrate the potential of this methodology alongside the ongoing effort needed to curb waste and the reliance on virgin materials.
1. Patagonia: Repair and resale alongside new clothing
Patagonia’s Worn Wear program gives customers ways to trade in eligible clothing and buy used items. The company also offers repairs and publishes care guidance intended to extend garment life. These services make a jacket or pack valuable to the business beyond its first sale.
The most robust circular advantage occurs whenever a fixed or pre-owned article supplants the acquisition of a brand-new one. Nevertheless, transportation, laundering, and restoration continue to generate footprints; consequently, secondhand volume on its own fails to demonstrate a net ecological benefit.
2. IKEA: Furniture buyback, resale, and spare parts
IKEA has introduced buyback services in participating markets, giving eligible furniture a route back into resale rather than disposal. Its secondhand offerings and spare-parts services address a practical problem: furniture is often discarded because a component is missing, a household moves, or an item no longer fits its owner’s needs.
The commercial model evolves from a one-time furniture sale to a service that facilitates ownership transfers and extends product usability. Triumph relies on resilient engineering, cost-effective gathering and transit, and proof that used items replace the creation of brand-new goods.
3. Interface: Recovering and remaking commercial flooring
Interface designs modular carpet tiles that can be replaced individually, so an entire floor need not be removed when one area wears out. Through its ReEntry program, the company collects eligible used flooring for reuse, recycling, or other recovery routes. It also incorporates recycled materials into some products.
This combines circular product design with a return system for commercial customers. The distinction matters: recycled content reduces demand for some virgin inputs, while recovering flooring at the end of use helps keep materials available for another production cycle.
4. Michelin: Tire management and retreading
Michelin provides commercial fleets with comprehensive tire-management services, where ongoing performance and maintenance take center stage alongside the initial purchase. Through its specialized retreading operations, the company grants qualified truck-tire casings a renewed lifecycle by simply renewing worn treads instead of scrapping the entire unit.
For fleet operators, extending tire durability can reduce both vehicle downtime and replacement expenses. For Michelin, this fosters a continuous service connection. Ecological evaluations must factor in complete tire longevity, fuel economy, and recycling; simply applying retreads does not resolve all environmental consequences linked to tire utilization.
5. Renault Group: Refurbishing vehicles and batteries
Renault Group has broadened its scope beyond traditional car production by engaging in vehicle reconditioning, component salvage, and the handling of worn-out electric-vehicle batteries. Its industrial overhaul initiatives focus on putting items and parts back into circulation whenever practical, whereas its broader reclamation efforts strive to extract value from end-of-life automobiles.
A refurbished vehicle or component can preserve much of the value already invested in manufacturing it. Battery reuse requires particular care: a battery suitable for a less demanding application may still be useful, but its condition, safety, and remaining life must be assessed rather than assumed.
6. Philips: Refurbished medical equipment
Philips provides pre-owned medical hardware, encompassing chosen diagnostic imaging devices, as a viable alternative to purchasing brand-new units. Such restorative processes generally entail thorough evaluations, part swaps, software upgrades, and rigorous testing phases prior to releasing the machinery back into clinical environments. Furthermore, Philips focuses on maintenance solutions and maximizing the operational lifespan of medical apparatuses.
This represents a notable circular economy prospect since healthcare apparatuses often incorporate considerable amounts of resources and demand extensive work to produce. It also poses a tough challenge: any restored unit has to fulfill all relevant safety and functionality standards. Circularity must never compromise clinical dependability.
7. Fairphone: Phones designed for repair
Fairphone designs smartphones with replaceable components and sells spare parts so owners can carry out many repairs. Its approach pairs physical repairability with a commitment to extended software support, which is essential: a working phone offers limited value if its software becomes unusable or insecure.
Fairphone redefines the standard smartphone equation by positioning extended device lifespan as a core product attribute. Its overall impact hinges upon the duration users truly retain their handsets, alongside the ongoing feasibility and affordability of repairs.
8. Levi’s: Secondhand denim and alterations
Levi’s operates a secondhand program for eligible used garments and offers repair and alteration services through selected locations. Resale gives existing jeans another customer; alterations can help an owner keep wearing a pair that no longer fits or needs mending.
The model recognizes that durability is only useful when clothing stays in use. A returned garment may be perfectly wearable, but if it sits unsold—or if its buyer purchases the same amount of new clothing anyway—the benefit is smaller than the resale figures suggest.
9. Decathlon: Used sports gear and rental
Decathlon offers secondhand sporting goods, buyback or trade-in options, and rental services in participating markets. These routes suit equipment used for a short season, a new hobby, or a child who will soon outgrow it. Refurbishing an eligible bicycle for resale, for example, can give an expensive, material-intensive product another owner.
Rental can also let several customers use one product over time. Whether it reduces impact depends on utilization: equipment needs to be used enough to justify the transport, maintenance, and replacement involved.
10. Apple: Trade-in, refurbishment, and material recovery
Apple’s trade-in initiatives and certified refurbished offerings provide qualifying hardware with avenues for extended lifecycles. For items past the point of reuse, the tech giant has engineered specialized disassembly workflows—featuring the Daisy robot—to reclaim targeted resources. Furthermore, Apple has elevated the proportion of recycled materials utilized across segments of its hardware portfolio.
These represent distinct stages rather than interchangeable assertions. Retaining a functional device in operation safeguards a greater portion of its production value compared to dismantling it for raw components. Although recycling stays vital whenever repurposing ceases to be feasible, it cannot single-handedly counterbalance the impacts of rapid upgrades.
Why do these modifications carry significance?
The examples span several business models: repair and resale, design for longer life, product recovery, refurbishment, and services that reward maintenance. Their results should be judged by more than the number of items collected or the amount of recycled content in a new product. Useful measures include:
- How long products remain in active use, and how often they are repaired or passed to another owner.
- How much new production a reused or refurbished product actually replaces.
- Whether demand for virgin materials falls across the business, not just within one product line.
- The impacts of collection, transport, processing, and any additional purchases encouraged by the program.
These brands show that circularity can change what a company sells and what it considers valuable. The deeper transformation is not simply offering a take-back scheme; it is building a business that benefits when products last, move efficiently between users, and require fewer new resources over time.
