At CES 2026, amid the usual buzz about faster processors and smarter devices, a different kind of innovation story took center stage: the shift from linear to circular business models in consumer technology. Leaders from Dell, Lenovo, Panasonic, and ResMed described how they are redesigning products, rethinking supply chains, and restructuring internal governance to keep materials in circulation for as long as possible.
Their message was clear: circularity is no longer a peripheral sustainability initiative. It is rapidly becoming a core design principle, a risk management strategy, and a source of competitive differentiation. And it is reshaping how products are conceived, built, serviced, and recovered across the tech value chain.
For circularity to move beyond rhetoric, it has to start at the drawing board. Each company on the panel has embedded circular principles into product design, but in different ways.
At Dell, a pivotal moment came with “Concept Luna,” a prototype PC that could be disassembled, repaired, and reassembled without tools—and even via robotic automation. That experiment became a catalyst for a company-wide shift to “design for circularity,” with engineers trained to prioritize durability, modularity, and end-of-life recovery across the portfolio.
Lenovo has similarly treated circularity as a core design pillar. Its “REAL” framework—Responsible design, Ethical materials, Accountable models, and Lifecycle intelligence—pushes product managers to plan not just for a first life, but for multiple lives of a device. With ThinkPad durability already entrenched, Lenovo is now designing products around questions like: How easily can this be refurbished? How will it perform in a second or third life?
Panasonic, with hundreds of product categories, starts at the product family level. Its three-pillar framework—minimize materials, maximize lifespan, and partner broadly—drives decisions from personal grooming tools to rugged laptops. ResMed, operating in highly regulated medical technology, integrates environmental and circularity criteria directly into its quality management system, treating them alongside patient safety and performance.
Across these different contexts, a common design playbook is emerging:
Most companies begin their sustainability journey with regulation and compliance. The panelists agreed: if circularity remains framed as a compliance exercise, progress will stall at “check-the-box” improvements that would have happened anyway.
The shift happens when circularity becomes part of business and product strategy. Lenovo’s circular business models—device-as-a-service, certified refurbishment, and asset recovery—have already grown into a more-than–$1 billion annual revenue stream. That financial signal is powerful: investments in durability and repairability are no longer just cost centers; they enable recurring revenue and asset monetization across multiple life cycles.
Panasonic and ResMed take a similar approach, but tuned to their contexts:
The practical takeaway: circularity gains traction when it is:
Designing circular products is only part of the challenge. The harder work lies in coordinating legal, technical, operational, and commercial teams to act in concert.
Panasonic has institutionalized “green transformation” teams at both business-unit and headquarters levels. These teams monitor regulations, market trends, and competitor moves, then connect otherwise isolated businesses that may share suppliers, materials challenges, or circular opportunities. A washing machine redesign became a case study: by engaging service technicians, factory engineers, and sustainability experts, Panasonic repositioned a frequently failing heat pump for easy maintenance, cutting warranty costs, extending component life, and improving customer satisfaction.
ResMed’s decision to house sustainability under compliance and embed it in the quality management system has had a similar harmonizing effect. Circularity is translated into the language of risk, regulation, and patient outcomes—terms that resonate with engineers and regulators, not just sustainability professionals.
Across the panel, several governance practices stood out as replicable:
Even the most circular product design fails without a compatible supply chain. Here, the panelists were candid: cost remains a major barrier. Yet they also highlighted compelling examples of value creation when partners align.
Panasonic’s partnership with Redwood Materials exemplifies this shift. End-of-life batteries are collected, processed, and transformed back into materials that Panasonic buys for new electric vehicle batteries—closing a loop domestically, and turning what was once waste into a strategic resource. Dell, for its part, is using recycled cobalt—much of it from EV batteries—in 50% recycled-cobalt laptop batteries. Extensive testing shows performance equal to or better than virgin cobalt after 1,000 cycles, countering long-standing fears about the quality of recycled inputs.
ResMed faces a different constraint: in many cases, medically approved material alternatives simply do not exist. That makes early engagement with suppliers, sector-wide collaboration, and advocacy through industry bodies essential to expanding the menu of viable circular materials.
To move supply chains toward circularity, the panelists emphasized:
Consumers and enterprise buyers increasingly say they care about sustainability, but how does that translate into purchasing behavior? The panelists warned against marketing “circularity” as an abstract concept. Instead, they are positioning circular features in terms of outcomes customers recognize and value.
For Lenovo’s customers, that means emphasizing reduced downtime, lower total cost of ownership, and de-risked compliance, rather than sustainability jargon. Dell is experimenting with applying commercial design innovations, such as easily removable keyboards and accessible USB-C ports, into consumer lines—then testing whether improved repairability and longer usable life resonate at the retail level.
Visible, tangible stories help. Dell’s early success with ocean-bound plastics owed much to the simple, intuitive connection between plastic waste and consumer choices. Similarly, repairability scores displayed alongside energy labels could normalize circular performance as a routine decision criterion.
Leaders seeking to market circular offerings effectively should:
Asked to look toward 2040, the panelists converged on a common prediction: circularity will move from voluntary leadership to standard business practice. Repairability scores will sit alongside energy labels. Robot-enabled remanufacturing and AI-optimized design will streamline circular flows that are today labor-intensive. Second and third lives for devices will be expected, not exceptional.
Most importantly, circularity will cease to be an “add-on” to the innovation narrative. It will be embedded in how technology is imagined, financed, produced, and experienced. For leaders today, the strategic question is no longer whether to engage with circularity, but how quickly they can move from compliance to competitive advantage—before circular practices become merely the cost of entry.