When DIY companies make 2030 circularity promises, there is an awkward elephant in the room. 68% of DIY revenue links to bonding product use (paint, adhesive, grout or sealant), a sector with unbreakable bonds as part of “premium” definitions, an almost anti-circular mission. How will brands and retailers close the loop? We interviewed multiple DIY companies and offer a framework, including ideas for where the solution will ultimately come from, with visible risks of inaction.
This report comes in PPT.
When we study circularity end-of-life for DIY bonding products, currently 97% of material escapes the loop, it is harming sustainability options for a large portion of all DIY spend, and circularity so far was about closing other industries’ loops, not our own. There are three barriers (below) we need to overcome, and if we do not solve all three parts, the solution to any one part cannot ever pay off.
Brands today are fabricating uncontaminated waste (ie not genuine) to allow needed end-of-life residual value tests. If we do not change waste handling during renovations and adopt Designing for Deconstruction principles in formulation and ideation, we will never close the loop; we will never even realistically test residual value in waste to know if there is profit in becoming circular.
As long as managers feel removed geographically and temporally from the moment of product end-of-life, they will also feel unaccountable and will continue to accept words like “impossible”. If companies face this in isolation, the scale, complexity and influence barriers are dealbreakers. We need to escape silo thinking; alliances in Consumer System Thinking are the answer we see.
There are circularity dead ends, like polymer cross-linking, that need to be fixed in formulation; this was the elephant in the room blocking progress so far, but recent technologies solve this. Once we prove embedded value in waste, finance can shift to a circular business model that views waste as a recoverable asset on balance sheets, and sustainability goals become profit goals.
The most attractive future vision is of a bonding products industry stakeholder alliance launching a product formulation that escapes cross-linked polymers, with residual value worth recovering that funds circularity, and this sector can start genuinely chasing 100% circular claims. The darker versions of forced regulation and deselection at retail have moving parts already visible today.
This project has a strict focus on sales to consumers only. Trade and professional sales are excluded. Home and garden refers to gardening, home improvement, homewares and home furnishings.
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