The depletion of non-renewable resources and climate change have prompted modern economic thinking to explore pathways from a linear economy to a circular one — yet a universally agreed understanding of how to close the loop remains elusive.

The process of developing circular economy standards emerged from the need to steer product development towards closing the technical cycle of resource circulation, particularly in environmentally sensitive sectors such as the chemical industry. Another driver is the challenge posed by divergent national environmental management frameworks in global waste trade: differing levels of environmental requirements between countries — for instance between the United Kingdom, with its stringent standards, and China, with comparatively lower ones — create conditions in which goods produced under high-standard regimes can be shipped for end-of-life treatment to jurisdictions with more permissive requirements.

At the national level, circular economy has long been associated primarily with waste prevention and waste management — that is, with the need to steer domestic production towards cleaner manufacturing and the generation of higher-quality, recyclable waste. The first circular economy standards developed in Europe are the British standard BS 8001:2017 and the French standard XPX 30-901:2018. This is not exclusively a European issue: frameworks for implementing circular economy strategies are under development in many countries, including China, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Nevertheless, the British standard has become the principal reference for creating sustainable production and consumption practices, and has also served as the foundation for the ISO circular economy — the so-called 59-series — standards.

Unlike ecodesign standards for grid-connected equipment (the EN 4555X family), which underpin the CE marking, circular economy standards are intended for organisations wishing to contribute to sustainable development by applying circular economy principles. They apply to all organisations regardless of legal form, sector, size, or position in the value chain or network, and are not directly applicable standards for product development. The greatest challenge in transitioning to a circular economy is globalisation, as supply and value chains have fragmented across the globe. The purpose of circular economy standards is precisely to support organisations in their transition (transformation) to a circular economy, through the concepts, approaches, and indicators needed to bridge the so-called linearity gap — that is, the gap between linear business models, which drive unsustainable resource use and environmental pollution, and circular, i.e. sustainable, ones.

Estonia has adopted 4 circular economy standards by the reprint method. In their full scope, the following harmonised standards belong to the ISO 59000 circular economy family:

  • EVS-ISO 59004:2025 Circular economy. Vocabulary, principles and guidance — defining key concepts, establishing the vision and principles of the circular economy, and providing guidance on the actions necessary to implement them;
  • EVS-ISO 59010:2025 Circular economy. Guidance on the transition of business models and value networks — providing guidance for the transition of an organisation’s value creation models and value chains from linear to circular;
  • ISO 59014:2024 Environmental management and circular economy – Sustainability and traceability of the recovery of secondary materials – Principles, requirements and guidance;
  • EVS-ISO 59020:2025 Circular economy. Measuring and assessing circularity performance — specifying requirements and providing guidance for defining and measuring the circularity of an economic system;
  • ISO 59031 Circular economy – Performance based approach – Analysis of case studies;
  • ISO/TR 59032:2024 Circular economy – Review of existing value networks;
  • EVS-ISO 59040:2025 Circular economy. Product circularity data sheet.

In principle, circular economy standardisation is developing along two tracks. One involves integrating ecodesign standards used in product development with circular economy principles — for example EVS-EN 45560, intended for all product groups that lack product-specific ecodesign standards. The other track comprises standards for guiding the linear-to-circular transformation of organisations. While product development standards focus on material use efficiency, the organisational transformation standards focus on resource circulation with the aim of reducing resource consumption and increasing the value added to resources within the organisation, value chain, or network as a whole.

Circular economy thinking is still in its early stages in Estonia. Existing approaches have concentrated on waste issues — whether in connection with textile waste, technologies, or analyses of local governments’ roles in waste prevention. Broader perspectives on circular business models are sometimes captured under the term “circular design,” which amounts to little more than renaming the ecodesign concept from the EN 45-series standards without any substantive justification. This is a flawed approach, since ecodesign standards are not the normative documents of circular economy standards.

The adoption of circular economy thinking and the application of circular economy principles in Estonia — including systems thinking, value creation, value sharing, resource management, resource traceability, and ecosystem resilience — is impeded by the fixation of our conceptual framework on waste management operations. It should be noted, however, that the core concepts used in circular economy standards are not the same as those in ecodesign standards. As long as this distinction is not substantively acknowledged, it will remain impossible to apply circular economy standards in Estonia.

Under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which entered into force in July 2024, a digital product passport must be prepared for all new products placed on the internal market. Under the Consumer Empowerment Directive, which entered into force in February 2024, and the Green Claims Directive, which has not yet entered into force, all environmental claims about products must be substantiated (note: on 20 June 2025, the Commission announced plans to withdraw the Green Claims Directive if it were to be extended to micro-enterprises). Under pressure from these three regulatory frameworks, significant momentum can be expected in the coming years for bringing order to the conceptual space needed to implement circular economy principles. In this context, a growing understanding should also emerge that climate impacts and environmental impacts are distinct categories and cannot be equated. Assessing climate impact reveals only one component of environmental impact; to assess all environmental impacts associated with a product, it is also necessary to evaluate the impacts of resource use associated with that product. Managing these impacts, in turn, requires the ability to measure circularity.

References are available here: Anu Kull TalTech thesis: quantification of circularity

When citing this text, please include the reference: A. Kull, Circular Village: a circular economy business model in real estate development. Tallinn University of Technology, 2025.