CCF Perspective
Building Circularity at Scale
A CCF perspective from the FMCG & Plastic Packaging Circularity panel at the Innovation for Circularity Summit 2026, Delhi.
Context
India’s circular economy conversation is moving from intent to implementation. As material consumption grows across sectors, the challenge is no longer only to develop circular solutions, but to align corporate demand, innovation, infrastructure and capital so that those solutions can work at scale.
The Innovation for Circularity Summit, convened by Climate Collective Foundation and anchored by the EU-India Resource Efficiency & Circular Economy Initiative (EU-IRECEI), implemented by GIZ India, brought together corporates, investors, startups, policymakers and ecosystem actors around this question. The panel on Circularity in FMCG & Plastic Packaging examined what it takes to create the infrastructure, financing and market conditions required to move packaging categories towards more circular and, where feasible, closed-loop systems.
The panel brought together perspectives from Marico Innovation Foundation, Upaya Social Ventures, Nestlé India, Banyan Nation and GIZ India, alongside Climate Collective Foundation.
The Big Idea
Circularity will scale when the systems around individual solutions become stronger. The next phase of circularity will not be determined by technology alone. It will depend on whether the systems around those technologies are strong enough to support adoption at scale. It is about connecting packaging design, collection, processing, traceability, finance and demand so that circular solutions can work reliably across real supply chains. The opportunity is to build the conditions in which solutions can become part of the system, rather than remain isolated interventions.
Three Key Insights
Better packaging design needs greater alignment
Packaging design has a direct bearing on what can be collected, sorted and processed. PET is a useful example of how greater material convergence and established collection systems can support stronger circular flows, while multi-layer formats and highly varied packaging portfolios create greater complexity downstream. The implication is that packaging design and waste infrastructure cannot be treated as separate questions. Greater alignment around materials and design-for-recycling, particularly for high-volume formats, can reduce sorting and processing complexity and improve infrastructure utilisation. It can also make a stronger case for shared infrastructure where the same systems can serve multiple brands and products. Standardisation does not mean every company using the same packaging. It means identifying where greater convergence can make collection, sorting, and processing more efficient without limiting innovation where differentiation matters.
Infrastructure needs demand that investors can see
Technical feasibility does not automatically make recycling or circular infrastructure investable. Processing facilities require significant upfront capital, while their economics can be affected by virgin resin prices, commodity fluctuations, and volatility in EPR certificate markets. High fixed costs combined with uncertain pricing increase the risk of investing in infrastructure before demand is sufficiently established. This makes demand visibility a critical precondition for mobilizing capital. Long-term procurement commitments and anchor buyers can give infrastructure operators greater confidence that there will be a market for recycled or alternative materials. Blended finance, guarantees, and other risk-sharing mechanisms can help address the remaining commercial risk during market development. The gap, therefore, is not simply a shortage of capital. It is the lack of sufficient alignment between capital, demand, and long-term market visibility.
Closed-loop systems need coordination across the value chain
Some of the hardest constraints sit between different parts of the value chain. Food-grade applications, for example, require reliable documentation of material origin, batch-level traceability, consistent input quality, and safety validation. Mixed collection streams and limited end-to-end documentation make these requirements harder to meet and can slow down the integration of recycled materials into regulated categories. The same principle applies beyond food-grade packaging. Better packaging cannot compensate for weak segregation, and better recycling technology cannot solve inconsistent feedstock. Regulation also has limited impact where local implementation capacity is weak. This points to a more selective form of collaboration: joint R&D where technical challenges are shared, shared reuse or processing infrastructure where it reduces costs, stronger traceability systems, coordinated consumer engagement and cluster-based implementation. The objective is not to make the entire value chain collaborative but to identify and work together on what individual actors cannot solve alone.
What This Means for the Ecosystem
The next phase of circularity requires different actors to address different parts of the same system. FMCGs can create stronger demand through procurement commitments and help align packaging formats where standardisation has clear value. Startups can continue to develop new materials, recycling, traceability, and circular business models but need clearer routes into supply chains and markets. Investors and lenders can support infrastructure where the underlying opportunity is viable but risks remain difficult to absorb. Government and municipalities remain critical to collection, segregation and local implementation, where capacity continues to vary across jurisdictions.
There is also a role for ecosystem organisations to bring these actors together around the constraints that are shared across the value chain. EPR has an opportunity to play a role beyond compliance reporting, particularly where it can strengthen collection, logistics and processing capacity. The broader opportunity is to connect these efforts so that circular solutions can reach more of the market through stronger infrastructure, clearer demand and more predictable economics.
Open Questions
- Where can greater standardisation in packaging unlock infrastructure that serves multiple brands and product categories?
- What combination of anchor buyers, long-term procurement and blended finance can make circular infrastructure more investable?
- Which parts of collection, processing, reuse and traceability infrastructure can be shared, and what would make that collaboration commercially viable?
- How can startups gain clearer pathways into corporate supply chains to test, validate and scale circular solutions?
Where We Go From Here
The next phase is about connecting design, infrastructure, finance, markets and implementation more deliberately. The focus now needs to be on practical collaborations that can strengthen circular systems across real supply chains.
For CCF, the opportunity is to continue convening stakeholders around these shared constraints and create pathways for innovators, corporates, investors and implementation partners to move from individual solutions towards coordinated action at scale.