The Circular Economy: From Awareness to Action with Sunil Thawani

Circular economy is dropping worldwide even as sustainability talk is louder than ever and that’s the wake-up call we can’t ignore. We’re consuming more than 100 billion tons of materials a year, yet only a small share loops back into the economy. So what does “circularity” actually mean when you’re running a business, managing risk, and trying to hit net zero targets without getting buried in competing frameworks and reporting demands? 

We sit down with Sunil Sawani, CEO of Quality Indeed Consulting and founder of the Circular Economy Forum and Awards, to translate circular economy from concept into action. We unpack “keep materials in use” through real examples: designing products to last and be repaired, dismantling buildings for certified reuse, secondary materials exchanges, and the rise of pay-per-use models where service replaces ownership. Sunil also shares how ISO 59000 brings structure by clarifying whether you’re pursuing value creation, value retention, or value recovery and why that clarity matters in the boardroom. 

We also get honest about what slows implementation: missing material flow mapping, limited lifecycle assessment data, uneven data quality, procurement habits that favor virgin inputs, and policy friction around moving used materials across borders. Along the way, we connect circular economy to organizational excellence and systems thinking, showing how circularity has to live inside strategy, KPIs, processes, and governance to last. If you care about sustainability strategy, supply chain resilience, digital product passports, and practical circular economy business models, this conversation gives you a grounded path forward. 

Subscribe for more conversations on excellence and sustainable transformation, share this with a leader who needs a clearer circularity roadmap, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Transcript

Why Circularity Is Urgent

Nancy Nouaimeh 0:14

Hello and welcome to the Excellence Foresight, the podcast where we explore the ideas and movements shaping the future of excellence, sustainability, and organizational transformation. I'm Nancy Nouaimeh, host of the Excellence Foresight Podcast. I'm an organizational excellence practitioner and passionate advocate for helping organizations align strategy, culture, systems, and leadership to achieve sustainable excellence. Today we turn our attention to one of the most important challenges and opportunities of our time, the circular economy. The reality is both sobering and urgent. The world now consumes more than 100 billion tons of materials annually, yet only about 7.2% of these materials come from recycled or secondary sources. In fact, global circularity has declined from 9.1% in 2018 to 7.2 in 2023, despite the growing awareness and discussion around sustainability. So the challenge today is no longer about awareness, but it's about action. What and how can organizations move the needle? To help us better understand what is happening, what progress has been made, and what the future may hold, I'm delighted to welcome Sunil Sawani. Sunil is the CEO of Quality Indeed Consulting in the UAE. He's a fellow of the American Society for Quality, the first fellow from the GCC. He's also a recipient of the prestigious ASQL and Caster Medal. Over the past three decades, he has led more than 100 projects across government entities, the United Nations, and organizations spanning oil and gas, healthcare, hospitality, financial services, ports, manufacturing, and education. His work has covered quality, business excellence, sustainability, business transformation, customer experience, governance, and enterprise risk management. And I've had the opportunity to work with Sunil in the past few years. His current focus is now on sustainability, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Circular Economy. In 2024, Sunil founded the Circular Economy Forum and Awards, an initiative aimed at inspiring organizations to transition from a traditional linear economy model toward a circular one. Sunil, I'm so pleased to welcome you here today at the Excellence Foresight.

Sunil Thawani 2:33

Thank you. Thank you very much, Nancy. Very happy to be reconnected again. Over to you. Yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh 2:51

Thank you, Sunil. I think that these were great times, and I've learned a lot from you across the years, and I'm so excited here to share your story and the circular economy award you've established with our audience. So let me start with my first question. You founded the Circular Economy Forum and Awards in the UAE, and the initiative is now entering its third cycle, and that's a great success. What inspired you to start this journey? And why do you believe circular economy has become such a critical issue for businesses these days?

The Forum And Awards Origin Story

Sunil Thawani 3:19

Yeah, thank you. Very good question. You remind me of Simon Senek Start with why? You see, I personally believe it's not only the people who have ideas, sometimes it is the ideas which bring people together. So that was one of the main drivers I got it started. So going back to 2015 when UN Sustainable Development Goals were signed off by 193 countries in September 2015, the goal number 12, which is on responsible production consumption, was very dear to me. It got me very attracted and it resonated well with me because I realized as a quality professional, you know it very well. You know, we talk of systems thinking, stakeholder engagement, KPIs, processes, design out, waste. So there are a lot of things between quality principles and concepts and circular economy. So I thought I can add some value around it. So about four years back, I started learning more about it, went to World Circular Economy Forum and other international events, and there I realized a lot of people think nothing is happening on circular economy in GCC or Middle East thing. So I thought, you know, what can I do around it? And as you rightly said, the rate of circularity being declining, I thought, let me add my experience of quality, ASQ, excellence, BQG, etc., and start an initiative around raising the voice of circularity in the region and around the world. Yeah, yeah. Now coming to the second part, why circular economy is critical for business society. I mean, you simply yourself said, you know, the linear operating model is not sustainable. You see, we are all the time eating, consuming things, or using things. In the end, everything goes back to material and extraction. About 60% of the greenhouse gas and other emissions are linked to material extraction and material processing and consumption. So circular economy has two sides to the coin, demand side and the supply side. So, what happened is you know, the way we are leading our lives, our lifestyle, rising income level, industrialization, and the culture of replace versus repair and uh you know, other things, consumerism, and driving satisfaction out of the materialistic life is at the source of the state of affairs we are in. I mean, the planet is getting harmed, and so is the material and consumption going up. So, this is some of the prime reasons I thought I can do a bit from my end by creating this global circular economy forum and award. Yeah. Thank you. Over to you.

Nancy Nouaimeh 6:40

Thank you. Sunil, you've always been a pioneer in all what you do, and we've worked together on a few awards earlier. And I think you always had those great great ideas, and you like adventure, right? You like to get into new things, think that shows in all what you do. And absolutely right, we're a consumption society, focus a lot on the material side of things, but I think that's not necessarily the best way moving forward. And businesses, government, and societies need to think differently. So, for leaders who are hearing the term, but may still view it mainly as an environmental concept, right? How would you explain the circular economy in simple terms for them? And why is it fundamentally different from the traditional take, make, dispose model that has driven economy so far?

Sunil Thawani 7:22

Yeah, very good. Yeah. Is it to put

Circular Economy Explained With Examples

Sunil Thawani 7:25

it very, very simply, you know, the whole thing is to keep materials in use as long as we can. That's first. Now, what does it mean is when we are designing the product, it should last for a long time. You know, let me just give you an idea, give you an example. I have a Titan watch, which uh my in-laws gifted me when they visited Bilai Steel Plant in 1994. It is still working fine. There's no need to change. It should give me correct time. Same as the fan or things like that. But lately, the society moved on now, the laptops and the cell phones, their lifespan is three, four, five years. They are designed for short term. So, circular economy concept is keep materials in use as long as we can. Now, what does this also mean is design it in such a way so that it can be easily repaired. Design it in such a way that it is adaptable. Let's say we build a house, uh, now build a community, people can live with that, it can become a living room, hall, or it can be changed to host a party. Let's say you go to a community, that community hall can become a badminton court, become a birthday party place, and so on. Or design a house where you can keep adding floors or you expand it horizontally. Lastly, keep using the secondary materials which you just yourself talked about. Take for example, you know, when a building is dismantled, not demolished. So we design the building which can be opened up as a Lego at the end of 30, 40, 50 years of its life. So when we are dismantling it, we do a dismantling audit and we find you know these door frames can be used again, or childers can be refixed, repaired, touched upon, and used again. And I test the steel from there, and it is good for reusing it. Now, this steel, which came out of dismantled building, goes to a secondary material exchange house. Now, let's say Nancy is building a new home for herself, instead of using new steel, buying new steel, she can go to the secondary material exchange, take the use and buy the used steel which is fit for purpose. There's a test certificate, there's a digital passport to that, and still good for use, and puts it again to use. So all this is fundamentally about design, design, design. Yeah, second is conserve the environment. The material we use in making products, do we know its environment footprint? So make choices which has got lower environment footprint. Yeah, uh, that's in very short, you know, I spoke about the concept of circular economy, and it's all common sense. Our parents, grandparents, they used to do it, you know.

Nancy Nouaimeh 10:53

Yeah, yeah, we go back to that wisdom, definitely. Absolutely. And this is a very simplified way to put it, Sunil. But the effort and the collaboration that comes or that's needed to make it work, they're tremendous. And a lot of effort, a lot of partnerships, a lot of discussions, and a lot of discovery, secondary use of products has to happen. So, since launching the initiative, what achievements or innovations or partnership you're most proud of and

Building Circularity Into An Award Model

Nancy Nouaimeh 11:21

you've seen within the applicants?

Sunil Thawani 11:24

Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, you see, as you know very well, you yourself being a leader in quality excellence and uh change management transformation, you see, we are operational excellence people, we believe in implementation, we believe in impact. So, when um me along with my colleague Marina, we were designing the award framework, we chose circularity in action. So everything should be actionable. So the award is designed in such a way we encourage award applicants to participate, and they have to demonstrate the implementation and impact. And we have used you know some of the quality principles plan to check at cause and effect, you know, enabler results from EFQM thinking, etc. And we had this criteria on leadership, strategy, processes, outcome, impact, learning lessons, and improvement. So the real achievement has been to design the model which is based on best practices and ISO 59,000. You know, the standard on circular economy. It is not a traditional standard as we have 9, 14, 49,000. It's a very, very business-driven standard. Then was to make it happen. Okay, having award framework is one. Get companies to encourage them to participate and showcase their practices. So we were successful in the two cycles. Now, what I'm very proud of was in this after the second cycle got completed in April 2025, we published curricular business practices and key takeaways from the forum. Now, here is a very concise, actionable list of implementation ideas and practices which companies in mining, repair, recycling, manufacturing services have implemented right from Brazil to Congo to UAE and all that. So this was very important for us. We wanted to add to the body of knowledge of implementation of circular practices, and uh this I'm really very proud of to see things getting implemented. On the soft side, you know, I had the opportunity to meet very interesting people, very learned people, thinkers, leaders like Dr. Yenes Potosnik. He's the ex-EU Commissioner for Environment, Science and Technology. He's also the co-chair for International Resource Panel for United Nations Environment Program. Such a learned man, most of the governments, Europe and abroad, this reach out to him for guidance and direction. A lot of thought leadership is done by him. Then we met Marion, she's the author of Digital Product Passport, and a lot of people I meet who want to change their careers from one or two functions to circularity, they are curious, they want to know. And I get contacted by a lot of uh people doing PhD programs in circular economy, so that's the soft side of it. And lastly, as you know, I love learning, so I'm learning new things all the time. Yeah, so that's what it is, and we involved youth also. We did a collaboration with SP Gen Global School of Management. We did a research project with the students there recently in the forum, a top uh large government university in UAE. They nominated 10, 12 students to attend our forum. So all this is very inspiring fundamentally, yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh 15:36

Absolutely. And Sunil, whenever, I mean, whoever stops learning, uh stop growing, right? So it's important to keep learning. And and I like the fact that you share, I mean, you create you you developed that circular business practices uh handbook because it's important for companies to understand how how to do things. A lot of people want to do things, but not necessarily go to that implementation and um knowing how to do that. So I would encourage everyone to check that um that handbook. Um, Sunil, you've had a lot of practices in uh this handbook. So when it comes to the lessons learned, can you share a couple of lessons learned that maybe are practical for organizations to focus on or to our listeners to take with them?

Sunil Thawani 16:17

Yeah, this is a very, very interesting question and very important one. You see, the whole conversation and narrative around

Business Value And Real-World Models

Sunil Thawani 16:27

circular economy started with environment. Then, as it progressed, the body of knowledge grew, standards came in, best practices, and the supply chain issues came in. Circularity came to the center stage in the corporate world, also at the boardroom. If I may share with you a beautiful study done by Bain and company, they reached out to about 420 leaders around the world and global leaders, and their response was 73% believe circularity, they think positive about increase in revenue if they implement circularity. 56% believe it impacts the cost of operations and materials if they implement circular practices. This resilience, as you know, the supply chain is getting impacted first COVID and now in some parts of the world due to geopolitical situation. So if you have you know secondary materials, used materials, you can incorporate. So resilience is also very much increasing, and of course, the greenhouse gas emissions. 65% of the leaders said it has a positive impact on GHG. Now the narrative has moved towards economy. That's how the word is circular economy. As long as it brings the business benefit, more and more traction it will get, and it will transform the way businesses are operate, manage. We have you need to look at the supply chain, you need to have systems thinking, you need to revise the design of everything. Let's see, in you know, they can ask the supplier that while you supply me steel, aluminium, or rubber, what is its carbon footprint so that I can make a decision what to use. And now the consumer is also looking at the carbon footprint or environmental footprint of the gown or uh apparel or uh any item before they buy, so that has given birth to digital product passports. European Union is one of the first ones to mandate in a selective manner, and it will come into impact into force from January next year for apparel and a couple of other products. And the digital product registry went live in Europe on 18th July. So that is very, very important that start with why. And of course, the challenges are plenty. Suppliers don't have digital product passports yet, companies have not done material flow mapping, companies don't have the life cycle assessment data. How is the quality of the data? And then there are governance kind of can a country import used material? What is the customs regulation around it? Suppose the used material can be imported into the country. Then does a company have a policy to purchase used material for incorporation into the main product? That's organization-wide issue. Then there's a design issue because you see the purity of a virgin material standard consistent is very high, whereas in the secondary material it can vary. So organizations have to redesign the technical specification before the product goes into the mold or injection press or things like that. So still the world is coming out of it, learning, practicing, and it needs transformative thinking as you yourself are you know championing and working this using the shingle model. So, in short, these are some of the you know challenges of mainstreaming the circularity, but at the same time, there are leaders. You know, Toyota recently launched Toyota Recycle Factory. Renault already has a recycle uh refactory to manufacture cars using a lot of used material near Paris. Marseille, they call it three triple E class ships, they have been made out of used material with 18,000 TEU tons capacity. Lastly, there is a concept in settler economy called pay as you go. So Mitsubishi Electric Company has put an elevator in a building, I think in ABN Amro Bank in Holland. That building did not purchase the elevator. Mitsubishi has installed it as their they are the owners of that elevator. So anytime anybody uses it going up and down, I think one cent or one penny or one uh cent is charged for that. So pay for the service. Ownership is with Mitsubishi, and we are paying for the use. Unido has a chemicals leasing scheme in many countries. So companies don't buy the chemicals, they buy the usage part of it. So all these concepts are slowly coming in.

unknown 22:23

Yeah.

Sunil Thawani 22:23

Like you know, Netflix. I don't buy CDs anymore. I pay to Netflix to watch the movie or a serial, and that's it. So these are some simple, nice examples, inspiring examples. Yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh 22:37

Yeah, they're great. And we see more and more. Now I'm I we're back in Europe and I see more also of these examples, Sunil, even secondhand clothes and big brands promoting that. So yeah, definitely. I mean, every little effort will help, every little effort will make it make a difference in this bigger picture. And Sunil, I'm like system thinking, in many discussions with many of our guests, we're highlighting more the importance of system thinking. And it's more and more, we teach this more and more because it's very important in everything that we do when it comes to organization-wide effort and even ecosystems, it's important to have that um that principle in place. And um just how do you see circular economy principles connecting uh with organizational excellence? You already gave us some examples, but innovation, long-term competitiveness, where do you

Data Gaps And Supply Chain Barriers

Nancy Nouaimeh 23:27

see that? Um how do you see circular economies supporting organizations in the long term?

Sunil Thawani 23:33

Absolutely. See, this is a spot-on question, Nancy. You see, we I mean, uh you we all know very well, if we don't have systems thinking, we cannot sustain the circular model. That means circularity has to go from strategy to business planning to KPIs, performance management, into processes, into policies, and so on. That's one. Secondly, we need to look at end-to-end systems. You know, I remember Dr. Deming's diagram in his last book, The New Economics, which triggered the transformation in Japan, right from tier one to suppliers till consumer, we need to map the whole material end-to-end around the system through which the material is flowing, emissions and all that are happening, and how do we manage and improve? So, same is with the policy performance matrix and all that. I somehow feel you know, quality professionals are very, very fortunate and brilliantly placed to help the organizations transition, move towards circularity from linear model. You know, incidentally, you know, the Dr. Jiran's autobiography, the architect, you know, Dr. Jiran had a very nice message for quality professionals. He said, Thank your lucky stars, because your profession is only going to grow and grow. So I can never forget that. And he's this he must have said at least 20 years back.

Nancy Nouaimeh 25:22

He was right, yeah.

Sunil Thawani 25:26

So we quality professionals bring a different lens to see the organization. And now the circularity dimension, if we built into that lens, everything changes. You know, I had the opportunity to meet Valerie Hitley, she was the global director for circular economy for the World Bank, you know, in financing. She said every loan application has to go through the lens of circularity. So that's what quality professionals can bring to the organizations, whether they are transforming or they want to change over, and they will very much add a lot of value and help organizations and leaders, you know, gain cost competitiveness, increased revenues, increased revenue, you know, the take back scheme, you know, as well as the aluminum cans or the rubbers or the old batteries to be collected from the electric vehicles where the battery had gone bad. There's a whole business opportunity, whole operating model needs to be developed. How do we collect back the used material and what do we do with it? So we guys are very well placed, I must say. Thank you.

Nancy Nouaimeh 26:45

Absolutely. And I think all these examples show, I think, the value of the quality profession and what we learn and the principles we apply. And so you're looking ahead 10 years from now, I think what you're saying give us hopes that we are on the right track. But if what should CEOs, policymakers, educators, and young professionals, you've worked with a few of them, be doing today if they are serious about accelerating the transition toward a circular economy? What they should be focusing on, the top three things that come to your mind.

Sunil Thawani 27:12

Yeah, that's a good question. But me, you see the circularity as a concept in all, I think to my knowledge, started in Japan in the 90s. I think they're one of the first ones. They didn't call it circular economy, they're talking about material efficiency and resource capacity, etc. Now just imagine in 30 years, from mid-90s to now, 101 countries have circular economy strategy, agenda, and a call to action at a national level. This I'm quoting from a report from Chatham House, UK, and UNIDO. That means this is growing and growing and growing. Secondly, I give the examples of uh circular economy as a business case, you know, to uh to integrate into the routine work. So policymakers still have a lot of work to do. At a government level, you know, you'll find there are a lot of different policies: waste management policy, material recovery policy, uh some other circular economy policy, then they have you know uh material resource efficiency policy or uh waste disposal policy or construction demolition waste management policy. We need one holistic comprehensive framework which integrates because you know they are not separate buckets or isolation. So Japan again is a very good example of having one holistic strategy

Systems Thinking Meets Organizational Excellence

Sunil Thawani 28:59

at a national level and that it cascades to different ministries: Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Transport, Ministry of You know, different uh environment and all that, and they work together as one. That's one message for the policymaking. Second is for government to re-skill and build capacities and competencies among people and professional, reskilling or embedding right from the youth level, actually, where you know people can get used to it. Teach these concepts from the school itself, as you know, quality is being uh taught, you know, in many schools and education, higher education. So this is very, very important, and a lot is happening in the world, and then corporates need to adapt and implement that. And this whole thing, transparency is very important. You know, how much is the material being collected, sorted, recycled? Like what is the rate of circularity? How much is the use of secondary material in manufacturing a car? I here in India it is 4% now. So the world needs to know this car had how much you know use of used materials. So transparency around circularity indicators, challenges, dialogues, way forward, body of knowledge, best practices, all that will help the circular ecosystem, you know. Yeah, in short, this is what it is, yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh 30:44

And then these are great messages, I think, great advices to give. And Sunir, just a question, maybe I would like to add here is that we there was a lot of effort on ESG, right? And organizations in Europe were pushed to report on that and they put a lot of systems in place. And now we're saying circular economy. Yeah, we are sometimes giving competing right uh priorities to organizations. Do you see circular economy? I mean, the path forward? Because ESG is taking a different direction, I would say. Now, do you see circular economy is the path forward for organizations for competitiveness, for sustainability, for uh you know, to reduce their waste because it has a competitive advantage.

Sunil Thawani 31:25

So, do you see it really the it's a very valid question, Ansin? I keep getting asked on it quite often. I mean, if we step back and see what do we need actually, we want to go to net zero, right? You know, I asked a lot of people we want to go net zero from what? What is our current? It is about 55 billion tons, right? So overall goal is we want to limit the earth temperature of the atmosphere here to 1.5, which I think we already exceeded this year and before. So we need to get to net zero. Now in ESG, it's a very good platform, good, you know, there's environment, sustainability, or social, and governance. Now it had a lot of interpretations for a lot of organizations, and maybe some considered as CSR. So there was you know gray area between CSR, sustainability, and it was a very wide domain. In my view, circular economy is a clear pathway.

Policy Priorities Plus ESG Versus Circularity

Sunil Thawani 32:33

There's a kills you very defined strategy and direction a company can follow. You know, company is getting lost. Where should I begin with? So circular economic standard ISO says, do you want to do value creation or value retention or value recovery? Be clear and then you have a full strategy and action plan around it. So, in my view, circular economy gives a very clear pathway for organizations to move forward, and they'll also be contributing to ESG. It's uh uh you know, it's also part of the puzzle. Yeah, and in the long run, they're trying to bring down going towards net zero. So somebody needs to have a different definition, even in circular economy, you need governance. I mean, you know, and you also need to take care of the environment. So I don't think they're competing, but uh a lot of large regulations are making it a little confusing. Yeah, exactly. But uh that's the way to move forward. Organization needs to start with why I'm doing what I'm doing, yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh 33:41

Yeah, that's a great message, I think. Sunil, start with why, like you said, and and it's important to have clarity and transparency and know where you're you're heading. Sometimes we start things, we don't necessarily see the end of it. So that's a great message, Sunil. Thank you very much for all your insights here today. Do you have any final message you would like to leave our audience with?

Sunil Thawani 34:00

Oh, thank you. I mean, I would just like to say, go for it. Circular economy is the future, and it is now. Circular economy is now. Thank you. Very nice and very happy to uh meet you again, and thank you for the opportunity to participate in your podcast. And uh, you are doing great, you know. You have uh really contributed to the global voice of quality.

Nancy Nouaimeh 34:28

Thank you, Sunil. I think I've learned a lot from you across the years, and I'm so happy to have you here today. Thank you for joining us. You've given us great great examples, I think the recycling factories of Toyota, the pay as you go models. So, all of these are great insights, and uh, you have a vision for the future. That's what I like about what you do, Sunil. And uh, what I take away from this conversation is that circular economy is not merely an environmental initiative, it's really a leadership opportunity, a business opportunity, and perhaps one of the most important systems to redesign now, um, to redesign and challenge our generation to work on for the future. So, to our listeners, thank you for joining us on the Excellence Foreside. If you enjoyed this episode, yes, please.

Sunil Thawani 35:09

I would just like to convey my you know thanks and appreciation to my colleague Marina Pugachova, who has been with me since

Final Message And Closing

Sunil Thawani 35:18

the idea of circular economy came into being. So, since she couldn't participate in the podcast, so I'd just like to record my appreciation for her contribution to all the things I keep doing around it. Yeah, yeah.

Nancy Nouaimeh 35:33

Yeah, I know that I've been I've met her a couple of times. She's she's a great person, great human being, and you need someone really with great values to work on these things. So thank you for that, Sunil. And um, I would like to thank everyone for listening. And then until next time, let's keep building excellence by design, not by chance, and that's what we need to do implementation. I'm Nancy Noime, and this has been the Excellence Foresight podcast. Thanks again, and until next time.

Sunil Thawani 35:58

Thank you. Wish you all the best. Yeah, thank you.

Nancy Nouaimeh 36:00

Thank you, Sunil.