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As companies shift to more circular systems—meaning those that avoid drawing on virgin materials or result in landfill-bound end products—a new set of terminology is emerging to help define how that plays out across industries.
While startups like For Days, Blueland and Thousand Fell have built circularity into their business models, even mainstream shops like like H&M, Coca-Cola and Athleta have incorporated circularity language into their messaging in recent years to communicate how sustainability efforts have grown.
The problem for brands, though, is that those terms don’t mean much to the average shopper.
Data from an Adweek-Morning Consult survey shows that just a quarter of Americans have seen at least some references to the circular economy in brand messaging. Familiarity with the term increased with education and income level, but most consumers (74%) said they hadn’t heard the term much or at all.
So, how should brands be talking about their efforts to build circularity into their businesses?
Experts told Adweek that avoiding jargon and prioritizing consumer education will support brands’ messaging efforts within this space. At the same time, transitioning to a circular economy is far from simple. Brands have a significant role to play in supporting—if not leading—those efforts across their industries and educating people along the way.
Keep it simple
At its core, a circular economy is made up of the same three principles that many people have long been familiar with: “Reduce, reuse and recycle,” said Matthew Hawthorne, sustainability consultant at environmental consultancy Quantis.
“That’s all circularity is about,” he explained. “How do we reduce our consumption of resources … reuse what we can that we already own … and then, finally, recycle whatever doesn’t maintain its value. How do we try and recover those resources to be used again, to the best of their ability?”
As companies build out resale and take-back programs, innovate with recycled materials and find new uses for their products’ end-of-life, cutting the sustainability jargon is crucial for communicating with the public—especially when it requires the customer to take action.