How Cisco Harnesses Circular Design for Sustainable Products

Achieving 100% Circular Design Integration

Technology giant Cisco has reached a major sustainability milestone by integrating circular design principles into 100% of its new products and packaging, aligning with its 2025 fiscal year goals. This achievement was recognized with the 2025 Reuters Global Sustainability Award for Circularity, underscoring Cisco’s commitment to reducing waste and extending the lifecycle of materials.

What is Circularity?

Circularity represents a sustainable production and consumption model that eliminates waste and minimizes the use of new resources by keeping products and materials in continuous use. Cisco’s approach replaces the traditional linear “take-make-dispose” model with practices such as reuse, repair, refurbishment, and recycling to create a closed-loop system.

Mary de Wysocki, Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Officer, highlights that circular design not only reduces waste but also extends product life, improves efficiency and security, and drives meaningful progress for customers and communities.

Implementation Through Governance and Innovation

Cisco developed an internal web-based Circular Design Evaluation Tool to assess new products and packaging against 25 established Circular Design Principles. Each product must score at least 75% to be approved, ensuring rigorous adherence to sustainability standards.

To maintain focus and accountability, Cisco established steering and audit committees across divisions, creating a clear governance framework that upholds program integrity and progress. This structured methodology provides a replicable model for other manufacturing and technology companies pursuing large-scale circular economy strategies.

Material and Cost Savings in Production

Cisco’s circular design principles have generated tangible environmental and financial benefits. For example:

• The Webex Room Bar eliminated foam packaging, substituting 55% recycled plastic, saving over 14,515 kg (32,000 pounds) of material each year.
• The Catalyst 9000 product line removed oil-based paint, resulting in US$9 million savings between 2020 and 2025.
• Paint removal also cut roughly 318 metric tonnes of volatile organic compounds and 3,400 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions during the same period.

Data-Driven Sustainability and Future Outlook

To support transparent reporting and continuous improvement, Cisco created a Sustainability Data Foundation—a centralized platform to manage sustainability metrics, analyze carbon footprints, and evaluate efficiency improvements. These insights are shared publicly via Cisco’s Purpose Reporting Hub and annual Purpose Report.

As digital infrastructure expands with emerging technologies like AI, Cisco sees circular design as a strategy to optimize the use of critical raw materials efficiently.

Despite meeting its circularity goals, Cisco considers this milestone just the beginning. The company plans ongoing refinement of its Circular Design Principles based on experience and customer feedback. Regular teardown events engage multidisciplinary teams to identify new innovation opportunities related to hardware design, packaging, sourcing, and repairability.

Conclusion

Cisco’s comprehensive adoption of circular design principles exemplifies how sustainability and business performance can align. Through governance, employee engagement, innovative product redesign, and data-driven decision-making, Cisco is setting a benchmark in circular economy practices within the technology sector — delivering value to customers while fostering environmental stewardship.

For manufacturers and technology firms aiming to embed sustainability deeply into product lifecycles, Cisco’s circular design framework offers a valuable blueprint for driving impactful change.

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