Some years can be captured in a few defining facts. 2025 was one of them. AI accelerated at unprecedented speed. On Budget Day, the Speech from the Throne made one thing clear: landfill and incineration are about to become far more expensive. And once again, a confronting statistic resurfaced: the global economy is still only 6.9% circular. That means 93% of raw materials are still lost.
The raw materials transition, the forgotten brother of the energy transition, came into clearer focus in 2025. Pressure on resources increased, legislation accelerated and AI became a surprisingly practical accelerator. What was especially striking: circularity behaves not as a separate project, but as a system that runs through everything, from policy to production to design to supply chain partners.
From waste to origin: why a loss of 93% demands other choices
The numbers from 2025 aren't easily forgotten, only 6.9% circular ... that's very little. Geopolitical tensions made raw material scarcity palpable for companies: prices rose, supply risks increased, and dependence on fossil raw materials became painfully obvious once again. In fact, research by Milgro showed that half of Dutch companies expect higher product and service prices due to scarcity.
As a result, 2025 marked a shift from reducing waste to understanding its origins. Companies increasingly recognized that waste is not a downstream issue, but a design challenge. Zero Waste is evolving from an ambition into a strategic approach rooted in product development and procurement, rather than in back-end collection processes.
AI in the circular economy: from buzzword to business strategy tool
Whereas in many sectors AI still hung above the market mainly as a promise, in 2025 in the circular economy it suddenly became surprisingly concrete. The year showed how smartly deployed algorithms could help organizations make sharper choices: from predicting where resource risks and waste arise, to simplifying complex regulations and providing real-time insight into material flows at a level of detail previously unthinkable.
Thanks to AI, for the first time companies could not just look back, but truly look forward. And in 2026? Then AI is shifting ever further toward the supply chain and product design, precisely the places where the biggest circular leaps can be made.
Rules, ambitions and reality: companies want to, but can't always
2025 also brought considerable movement in laws and regulations. The European Commissionpresented the Omnibus Simplification Package, PPWR officially came into force, and the Speech from the Throne announced higher costs for landfill and incineration.
But there was also a friction point there:
half of Dutch organizations feel inadequately supported by the government in their circular ambitions.
Entrepreneurs don't get stuck on the amount of rules, but on their feasibility. Clarity, handles and practical tools are often still lacking.
Belgium was mentioned remarkably often as an example: there, government and business are moving more in the same direction. A lesson for 2026, where consistency becomes as important as ambition.
Earth Overshoot Day: July 24, 2025 and a zero waste office
One of the most confronting facts of 2025: Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 24.
That means humanity is living as if we have 1.7 Earths at our disposal. Therefore, we need to move toward a systemic change and not a small adjustment here and there. How do we move that date toward the end of the year?
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Earth Overshoot Day
Zero Waste at the office is a low-threshold but highly effective step to begin to change behavior and the appreciation of waste. At Milgro, this step is already taken: no more residual waste bins, but pre-selected material streams so that waste can simply be generated less.
AI plays an unexpectedly large role in this: from behavioral analysis to smart dashboards that help employees and processes automatically prevent waste.
Milgro is B Corp certified!
Besides all substantive developments, 2025 was also the year of something else for Milgro: the official B corp certification.
An important signal to chain partners and customers: circular enterprise is not only about materials, but about a way of working that is socially, ecologically and technologically in balance.
It was a long and intensive process, but precisely because of that, B Corp certification gives the clear signal that Milgro does what it promises. The strength lies in transparency and data-driven work: exactly the elements where companies that want to take the same step in 2026 can make their biggest gains.
2026: the year of actually doing
If 2025 made one thing clear, it is this: the insights are there, the urgency is there, the technology is there. So 2026 will be the year of making concrete choices and setting a course! A course that is going to ensure that Earth Overshoot Day is pushed back, that is going to shape the route to more circular chain partnerships and where dependence on new raw materials is reduced. This course will start to determine how and how fast we grow from that 6.9% circular world to a future-proof economy!
What is for you the development of 2025? Let us know in the comments!
