White Papers · Scaling the Circular Economy Series

The Circularity Delta

A Financial Metric for Maximizing Residual Value Recovery

Written by Peter C. Evans · All Things Circular · August 2026

Most enterprises recover only a small share of residual value, leaving money on the table at the exact point where assets should be converted back into cash or working capital. This paper defines the circularity delta, shows how to calculate it, and breaks it into six sources of value loss you can manage.

• The formula, and how to run it as a board-level KPI
• Six sources of value loss — and the five you can fix
• What a 20% recovery improvement is worth across 55 million laptops

“Recovery rate answers how much did we process, while the circularity delta answers how much of the money is coming back, and the second question is the one that belongs on a CFO's desk”