COP30 is the 30th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, a global gathering where governments, businesses, and civil society negotiate climate policy, assess progress toward climate goals, and advance international action on mitigation, adaptation, and sustainability. On November 11, 2025, at COP30, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and One Planet Network officially unveiled the Global Circularity Protocol (GCP) — the world’s first globally harmonized, science-based, voluntary framework for measuring, managing, and communicating circularity across business value chains. The GCP reflects a major collaborative effort to close one of the key gaps that has held back large-scale circular economy adoption: consistent, credible, comparable measurement and reporting. With its launch, the GCP aims to mark a turning point: circularity is no longer just conceptual or aspirational — it becomes something companies can embed into core strategy, operations, and disclosures, with transparency and accountability. It helps organizations move from circular-economy ambition to actionable, measurable performance. Key features & structure

• Standardized global framework: The GCP defines common scopes, indicators, and methodologies for assessing circularity performance and impact. That means companies across sectors, sizes, and geographies can use the same yardsticks for material flows, resource use, waste, emissions, and broader circularity outcomes.


• Systemic approach: It supports evaluation of a wide range of impacts — not just resource use or waste reduction, but effects on climate, natural resources, equity, and business performance — encouraging companies to view circularity holistically rather than narrowly.


• Flexible & inclusive journey: Organizations can apply GCP at different levels — material, product, or business — depending on their context and maturity. It’s designed to be usable by small, medium, and large enterprises across industries.


• Progressive maturity model: Companies can start from any point and gradually build from initial framing and preparation, through measurement, management, then communication.


• Alignment with existing sustainability/reporting standards: GCP is interoperable with existing frameworks and reporting standards which helps businesses integrate circularity reporting into broader ESG disclosures.

Why the GCP matters: For years, many companies claimed commitment to “circular economy” or resource-efficiency — but without a common measurement or reporting standard, such claims were difficult to verify or compare. The GCP changes that dynamic. By standardizing metrics and methodology globally, the Protocol helps turn circular economy promises into verifiable commitments. That helps build trust among stakeholders — investors, regulators, consumers, and supply-chain partners. It also lowers a fundamental barrier to scaling circular business models: the lack of credible data and measurement infrastructure. Moreover, if widely adopted, the potential system-wide gains are massive. Early impact analysis by the GCP suggests that by 2050, adoption could lead to cumulative material savings on the order of 100–120 billion tons — roughly equal to one year’s current global material consumption — and avoid 67–76 gigatons of CO₂ equivalent emissions, significantly contributing to climate and resource-use goals. Challenges ahead & what to watch.

• Adoption at scale still uncertain — because the GCP is voluntary, its impact depends on how many companies globally choose to adopt it, and how rapidly they integrate it into operations.


• Data collection and traceability complexity — implementing GCP fully across complex global value chains requires robust digital infrastructure and reliable data sharing. Real-world deployment will be challenging, especially in fragmented or resource-constrained supply chains.


• Sectoral and regional variation — different industries (textiles, electronics, packaging, heavy industry) face varied challenges; not all metrics or interventions will suit every context. The GCP is flexible, but success will hinge on tailoring to sectoral realities.

Conclusion: The GCP — a turning point for circular economy The launch of the Global Circularity Protocol marks a turning point: circularity is shifting from rhetoric toward rigor. By providing the first globally harmonized, science-based, voluntary standard for measuring, managing, and communicating circular performance and impact — usable by companies of any size or sector — the GCP offers a credible foundation on which to build a truly circular economy. If widely adopted, it could unlock enormous material savings, emissions reductions, and accelerate systemic transformation across industries and geographies. At the very least, it raises the bar for accountability — transforming circular ambition into measurable, reportable, and investable action.