With pressure mounting to prevent waste and hit lagging emissions targets, the first science-based framework for circular business practices has launched. The Global Circularity Protocol (GCP) emerged Nov. 11 during COP30 in Belém, Brazil, supported by scores of large corporations.

The protocol, issued by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the One Planet Network, is an attempt at a single, interoperable structure to scale circularity. They position it as akin to the GHG Protocol for the circular economy. 

Reaching net zero climate emissions isn’t possible without designing out waste and reusing, recirculating and recycling far more materials, the backers insist. For example, if widely adopted by business, the framework would save 100–120 billion tons of cumulative materials through 2050, according to President and CEO Peter Bakker of the WBCSD, based in Geneva. In addition, it would avoid the equivalent of more than a year of global carbon dioxide emissions.

“The Global Circularity Protocol for Business sets a new benchmark for corporate performance and accountability,” Bakker said in a press statement. “The GCP packs a serious punch.”

The protocol’s development over the past three years has enlisted 150 experts across 80 organizations. WBCSD member corporations involved include Apple, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Panasonic and Trane. Non-corporate partners include the African Circular Economy Alliance, Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

“The GCP represents a significant step forward in aligning businesses around measurable, scalable circularity action,” stated Tove Andersen, president and CEO of TOMRA, a Norwegian technology company that is among those driving the development of the protocol. “By creating a shared framework for progress, the GCP will accelerate the shift from intention to impact – driving systemic change and informing policies that advance a circular economy.”

Mandates coming

The GCP comes as regulatory pressures are rising to hold business accountable for waste at scale. The European Union is implementing its Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which imposes eco-design requirements for high-emitting industries and bans companies from destroying unsold clothing and shoes.

Extended producer responsibility laws are rising for packaging and fashion in Europe and in the U.S., led by California and with proposals active in several other states.

The EU Circular Economy Act is expected to be proposed next year, addressing structural barriers to circularity. Europe is requiring a central registry for digital product passports by July 2026, which could potentially simplify tracing materials and product flows.

What’s inside the playbook

The 236-page playbook for the protocol walks businesses through the following steps to embed circulartity throughout their operations and supply chains:

Define the scope: Frame the main use case for circularity, such as to steer the company internally, mitigate resource risks or satisfy external reporting. Define whether to focus on products, materials or business units. Identity stakeholders and gauge their readiness. The output: a purpose statement and roadmap for creating data systems to measure circularity.

Map circularity “hotspots”: Identify how the organization will align with GHG or CSRD standards. Trace how materials flow across the value chain, from the raw commodity to a product’s end of use. Conduct a double materiality review over risks, opportunities and major impacts. The output: a map of material flows and a ranked list of “levers” for circularity, such as design, reuse, repair or recycling.

Quantify circular performance: Measure the inflows and outflows of recycled, renewable and recovered materials. Consider factors such as the material intensity per product. Assess how circular materials compare against virgin ones. Align metrics with established standards. The output: baseline metrics for using circular materials and creating value from them.

Manage the findings: Find quick wins or inefficiencies in initial findings. Set targets and progress indicators connecting circular metrics to financial and sustainability goals. Then assign teams governance roles. The output: a circularity strategy and action roadmap that links to business planning, investment and risk management.

Disclose and engage: Use the protocol’s framework to report results. Tailor reports for investors, regulators, customers and suppliers. Then, secure third-party assurance for credibility. The output: standardized circularity reporting, ready-made for ESG filings and supply chain transparency.

Next steps

Finally, just as the GHG Protocol evolved over time, the GCP is a work in progress. Areas of refinement include helping companies expand product-level pilots to circular efforts at scale. Setting a science-based target methodology for circularity across sectors is another goal. 

“The ambition is to both refine organization-level assessments and provide the connective tissue between business action, financing, policy development and system-level transformation,” the report noted.

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Three large apparel trade groups have formed an organization that, if chosen by the state of California, could serve as the operational backbone for the first law in the U.S. that mandates the management of textile waste.

On Nov. 3, the Textile Renewal Alliance (TRA) announced its creation along with its bid to help execute California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act by serving as the producer responsibility organization (PRO). The nonprofit alliance comprises the National Retail Federation, the California Retailers Association and the American Apparel and Footwear Association.

The extended producer responsibility (EPR) law, which took effect in January, establishes that brands deal with the post-consumer journeys of their used clothing, shoes, handbags, bedding, curtains and other textiles. Toward that end, it will tab a PRO to coordinate material repair, reuse or recycling, as well as register textile producers, collect fees, establish collection networks and report progress to the state.

Last year, the apparel industry produced 120 million metric tons of waste, an amount that could shoot up by another 30 million metric tons within five years, according to the Boston Consulting Group.

A bid for PRO status

By January 1, 2026, California will begin to take applications from bodies interested in the role of overseeing PRO; the state’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, nicknamed CalRecycle, will make the selection in March. By next July, companies selling or importing textiles in California will need to join the approved PRO.

The PRO will have until 2030 to put a stewardship plan in place, and in 2032, CalRecycle will be able to tweak how the law is executed.

Months away from the CalRecycle decision, the new alliance is promoting itself as being able to leverage members’ intimate industry knowledge and resources to reduce waste at scale. Those entities also have incentives to comply with the EPR law.

“The National Retail Federation is working with our industry partners, producers and stakeholders in California to strengthen infrastructure for managing textiles in the state,” said Stephanie  Martz, the National Retail Federation’s chief administrative officer and general counsel, in a statement about the alliance’s launch. “Through TRA, we’re striving to create a producer‑led stewardship system where textiles are used, reused and recycled responsibly and thoughtfully.”

The D.C.-based National Retail Federation has more than 16,000 members and a board with executives from Walmart, Target and Levi Strauss. The Sacramento-based California Retailers Association represents a wide range of retailers. The D.C.-based American Apparel and Footwear Association includes more than 1,100 brand members and a board filled in part by Ralph Lauren, New Balance Athletics and Carhartt.

At the moment, at least one other group is seeking to become the PRO. The Landbell Group, based in Mainz, Germany, already manages 42 producer responsibility organizations in 18 countries. In the Netherlands, it has managed more than 18,700 tons of used textiles since January. 

“Our extensive background in managing multiple PROs around the world and our specific expertise in managing and developing textile PROs puts us in a unique position” to do the same in California,” said John Hayes, Landbell’s president.

Execution of EPR

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and other nonprofits have rallied around EPR rules, which are also rolling out across the European Union. They see the Golden State’s legislation as crucial to managing spent materials, ideally after reuse and waste prevention have been exhausted.

The “producer‑led stewardship” pitch of the TRA, though, worries some sustainability advocates, who wonder if the same industry groups that generate textile waste should be responsible for managing it.

The new textile law is similar to California’s Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act which was signed in 2022. In that case, the state-designated PRO is the Circular Action Alliance, whose board includes retail, consumer brands and packaging leaders such as Amazon, Coca-Cola and Target.

Best-case scenario, California’s textile EPR law will become a blueprint for the rest of the country, said Teresa Milio Birge, state policy manager of American Circular Textiles, a Brooklyn nonprofit that lobbies for fashion industry regulation. (Its members include brands H&M and Reformation; secondhand retailers eBay, ThredUp and Vestiaire Collective; and textile recycling startups.) And that means the TRA, or whichever group is ultimately chosen, could find itself in position to serve other states who pass EPR laws in the future. Currently, bills are brewing in New York and Washington State.

“While Textile Renewal Alliance is only one organization vying for PRO designation, it’s important to consider that this nonprofit has been established by three trade associations,” she said. “We are eager to see how the position of these associations may be considered, especially as governance is put into practice.”

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Startups and large corporations may seem like natural allies in tackling the climate crisis. One has ideas; the other has scale. Yet when they try to work together — as pilot partners, customers, investors or acquirers — the relationships often sputter.

At the Climate Tech Commercialization Forum at last month’s Trellis Impact 25, entrepreneurs, investors and corporate sustainability leaders wrestled with the why of that — and, more importantly, how to fix it. The technologies needed to decarbonize the economy mostly exist, said moderator Jake Mitchell, who leads climate tech innovation at Trellis Group. “So the challenge isn’t invention — it’s integration.”

The forum, now in its second year, focused squarely on smoothing the friction that prevents promising technologies from scaling. This year’s “friction buckets,” chosen by advisors representing both startups and large companies, were “culture” and “communication” — the two variables most within human control.

When strengths become liabilities

Startups are built atop bold vision, speed and risk-taking; corporations thrive on structure, consistency and scale. Each party’s strengths can cripple collaboration if unchecked. A startup’s big-picture thinking can become overpromising. A corporate’s discipline can crush creativity. Each side’s superpower can be a blind spot.

“Startups and corporations have entirely different business models for innovation,” said Rob Shelton, innovation consultant and mentor at Harvard’s Innovation Lab.

Startups win by moving fast, proving product–market fit and adapting constantly — “shape-shifting,” as Shelton put it. Corporations, by contrast, depend on governance, predictability and risk control. “Neither side fully understands what the other is trying to do,” he said. “That shows up in decision speed, resource allocation, even hiring approvals.”

His prescription: candor. “Be honest about your business model and your biases. Every organization has them — rooted in history, culture and risk tolerance. Name them, and you can start to work through them.”

Alternative pathways — and better pitches

A panel featuring Shelton, Leila Madrone of Activate and Carrie Davis of Third Derivative explored how founders can bridge that gap.

Activate’s nonprofit fellowship helps “hard-tech” scientists — those working with molecules, machines and materials rather than code — become entrepreneurs. Madrone, a robotics engineer who spent 12 years running her own energy startup, described how venture capital’s pressure for 10- to 20-fold returns often derails climate hardware companies.

“The VC model rewards hype,” she said. “But corporate partnerships can be faster, more pragmatic routes to profitability — and to impact.”

Davis, whose accelerator builds ecosystems that link investors, corporations and startups, observed that midsize companies are often better partners than Fortune 500 giants. “They’re hungrier,” she said. “They can move faster and actually tell the story publicly, which helps startups build credibility.”

When pitching corporations, the panelists agreed, founders must change their language. “VCs want disruption,” said Madrone. “Corporates want amplification. They want to strengthen what already works.” 

“Don’t promise growth; promise advantage,” advised Shelton. “Show how you’ll help them commercialize faster and cheaper than they could themselves.”

Proof, not promises

If culture and communication are the sources of friction, trust is the lubricant. Michelle Ruiz, CEO of Hyfé, a startup that turns food waste into specialty chemicals, described how her team built that trust through “stage-gating”: dividing their commercialization roadmap into small, low-risk steps.

Rather than proposing massive joint ventures up front, Hyfé begins with gram-scale samples, then pilot projects at kilogram scale, and only later at full production. “Each stage-gate gives both sides a chance to ask: Do we still feel comfortable? Is the business case clear?” Ruiz said. That approach, she added, “translates ‘move fast and break things’ into ‘move smart and build trust.’”

Inside a working partnership

A case study of Upstream Tech and ENGIE New Ventures showed how patience and persistence pay off.

Upstream, a 30-person software company that uses AI to forecast river flows, began working with ENGIE’s hydropower division in 2019, landing a commercial contract a year later and a corporate investment in 2023. Yet progress was slow.

“We had miscommunications, translation issues, budget cycles that seemed endless,” recalled Shiraz Haji, a climate tech veteran who serves as senior advisor to ENGIE. “But Eve Ratliff and her team at Upstream stayed patient. They understood that inside a 100,000-person company, timing isn’t just about enthusiasm.”

Ratliff said having an internal champion like Haji was indispensable. “He knows who talks to whom and how decisions actually get made,” she said. “That’s intelligence you can’t get from a website org chart.”

Upstream initially emphasized that its forecasts were more accurate — “a technical brag,” Ratliff called it. It didn’t resonate. The company eventually built an ROI calculator to show how better forecasts could optimize hydropower revenue, then invited ENGIE managers to adjust the assumptions themselves. “That turned a sales pitch into a collaboration,” she said.

Asked how much environmental impact factored into those discussions, both were blunt. “It wasn’t a big part,” Haji said. “ENGIE cares deeply about climate — but at the operational level, it’s about performance and reliability.” Ratliff added that framing their value as climate-risk mitigation helped connect sustainability to business outcomes.

Tabletop takeaways: Closing the gap

Midway through the forum, participants broke into tabletop working groups — a mix of startup founders, corporate innovators and investors — to co-create solutions to the culture-and-communication divide. A few themes emerged:

• Start with empathy, not ego. Founders admitted that they often underestimate the internal politics and risk aversion inside big companies. Corporate representatives confessed that they rarely appreciate the existential time pressure startups face. One table called it “learning to speak each other’s anxiety.”
• Build a shared calendar of reality. Timing was the most cited pain point. “Startups think in weeks, corporates in quarters,” said one report-out. Participants proposed joint planning roadmaps that lay out both sides’ milestones — product readiness, budget cycles, procurement gates — to prevent mismatched expectations.
• Define success in both languages. Groups urged partners to co-create success metrics that blend ROI and impact. “If the corporate only counts cost savings and the startup only counts tons of CO₂ avoided, you’ll never align,” one facilitator summarized.
• Find the translator. Nearly every group emphasized the importance of a champion — someone like ENGIE’s Haji — who can interpret corporate culture for startups and vice versa. One table called for formal “liaison fellowships,” embedding startup staff temporarily inside corporate innovation teams.
• Tell the story together. Pilots often stall in silence, participants noted, because neither side knows how — or is allowed — to publicize early wins. “We need shared storytelling,” said one corporate participant. “A co-branded success narrative builds confidence internally and externally.”

Following each table’s report-out, it became clear how practical — even tactical — the ideas had become. “Last year we diagnosed the friction,” said Mitchell. “This year we started building the grease.”

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The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) just opened a new consultation round on its latest Corporate Net-Zero Standard draft, the long-awaited update to its first-of-a-kind 2021 standard, expected for final publication in 2026. Meanwhile, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) working group is deep in negotiations on its Net Zero Transition Plan standard, part of one of the largest multilateral consensus processes in the international standards system. That draft is expected to go to global public consultation early in the new year.

Having spent many months toiling over both as a member of both expert working groups, I’ve learned they play distinct but complementary roles in global climate governance. SBTi provides technical precision on how companies should interpret science-based pathways. ISO offers a broader, international framework that guides how organizations plan and deliver net zero in diverse contexts. 

Over the coming public consultations, LinkedIn will surely light up with explainers dissecting the technical details of these two tools for setting companies on a path to net zero. Yet the most important and overlooked aspect of both standards is not what they say — it’s how they’re made.

The inner workings of standards

While it may be hard to believe given the polarization across the globe, I’ve had a front-row seat to the extraordinary democratic efforts behind each of these drafts. SBTi staff, for example, process 70 days worth of reading in comments they receive each time they run a consultation. ISO, for its part, convenes hundreds of national representatives from industry, civil society and science across its 170-plus member countries debating in real time, online and in person, to build true global consensus.

Voluntary initiatives like SBTi can move fast, with full-time staff dedicated to research, review of latest science, piloting and probing of new technical solutions to advance at the ”frontier of good practice.” ISO develops globally legitimate, auditable frameworks that can be used by governments and organizations and understood as widely accepted “common international good practice.” Both engage in broad engagement with thousands of voices across geographies, supply chains, finance and civil society, solving interpretive challenges that no single government or company could address alone.

Recent years of experimentation with corporate net-zero strategies have sharpened the focus on practical implementability. Revising standards to reflect real-world constraints, while remaining true to the science of our dwindling carbon budget, requires delicate navigation of cost burdens, competitiveness, fairness and innovation.

Hot-takes coming over the next few weeks will likely focus on trade-offs such as:

• How to manage Scope 3 emissions robustly without spreading companies too thin
• How carbon credits can be credibly used or how durable removals neutralize residual emissions
• How quickly sectors across geographies must decarbonize given varied capabilities and responsibilities

These are emotional issues, and rightly so. They touch livelihoods, investment and visions of fairness. And yet, both standards are advancing through compromise grounded in broad consultation.

Whether we like every clause that lands in the drafts, we should appreciate the intention and expertise that shaped them. At a tenuous moment for representative democracy across the world, i’s powerful to witness intensive and inclusive governance in action.

A democratic process

Standards aren’t just climate action playbooks; if done correctly, they’re living examples of deliberative democracy.

This matters. Without climate standards backed by good governance, we drift toward fragmentation such as:

• Every company inventing its own definition of “net zero”
• Powerful sectors writing rules that serve only themselves
• Confusion and non-comparability for investors, civil society and regulators

That path leads us away from fair, green competition and into climate chaos, a world where companies deplete shared resources and pollute shared skies without guardrails. Good standards provide a path through the chaos, built on argument, evidence and collective decision-making.

Of course, no governance system is perfect. Who is in the room, how evidence is weighed and when consensus is required are all tough choices in themselves that introduce real trade-offs. And voluntary standards cannot replace public policy. We still need enforcement and widespread adoption.

But the upcoming standards will emerge from consultation with thousands of stakeholders. That legitimacy is worth defending.

So as consultation season kicks off, I have one call to action: participate vigorously and generously. Offer critiques while keeping sight of the bigger picture. In addition to dissecting the standards, don’t forget to share your support for these living documents, because they’re the results of democratic exercises in progress.

Those who benefit from eroding democracy and the planet would like nothing more than to see the climate community lose faith in its own collective processes. We cannot afford that.

In classical Athens, the birthplace of Western democracy, fierce agonistic argument was encouraged before a vote. But once a decision was made, persuasion ended and compliance began as a civic commitment to one another.

As the next round of corporate net-zero standards emerges, perhaps the greatest contribution we can make is not the cleverest metric, but a renewed commitment to one another and to the output, as a result of good-faith governance.

Strong processes don’t guarantee perfect outcomes. But they do make better outcomes possible. Climate standards will never be perfect, but they keep us together, anchored to science and collective progress. At this moment, more than ever, examples of democracy in practice deserve our support.

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Building on sentiments from how people engage emotionally with climate action, research shows people in the Global South express strong support for environmentally-friendly development and a willingness to make personal sacrifices to achieve it.

Countries such as Kenya, Colombia, Peru, Vietnam, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa and Brazil stand out for their strong support for a greener future and high willingness to make sacrifices to achieve it, according to survey by Trellis data partner GlobeScan. In contrast, enthusiasm for green progress often stops short of personal trade-offs in the Global North, reflecting a more cautious, comfort-driven approach. Many countries in the Global North, including the U.S, U.K., France, Germany, Japan and Australia, fall into the quadrant of lower support and lower willingness to sacrifice, signaling a need for different engagement strategies.

What this means

Accelerating the global green transition requires recognizing regional dynamics. Tailored strategies that reflect local motivations and realities will be essential to drive meaningful climate action worldwide. In the Global North, the challenge is to make sustainable choices easier, more affordable and more aspirational. In the Global South, there is clear momentum for ambitious change and a readiness to act. The strong correlation between support and willingness to sacrifice in the Global South signals that these countries have the social foundation needed to drive progress if other conditions (economical, political, structural) permit. In the words of former UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres: “The world is no longer waiting for Washington. This time the Global South is leading the way.”

Based on a survey of more than 31,000 people conducted July — August 2025.

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