I’m honored — and deeply proud — to share a milestone that speaks to what’s potential when innovation and goal transfer in lockstep. Cisco has reached its objective to include Round Design Ideas into 100% of latest merchandise and packaging by the top of our 2025 fiscal 12 months.
This objective, first set in 2019, displays years of partnership, persistence, and artistic problem-solving throughout our groups. By designing with circularity in thoughts, we’re minimizing waste, extending product life, assembly buyer expectations, and driving innovation.
Including to this second, Cisco was additionally acknowledged with the 2025 Reuters World Sustainability Award for Circularity — an incredible acknowledgment of how far we’ve come. This recognition underscores our dedication to reimagining how expertise is designed, constructed, used and reused as we proceed our transition from a linear to a round enterprise mannequin.
Our round design journey
Cisco has an in depth framework of 25 Round Design Ideas that information selections throughout {hardware}, packaging, sourcing, and repairability — supporting consistency, scale, and accountability.
Right now, we will proudly say we’ve got reached our objective, however this achievement isn’t just a quantity. It’s a narrative of innovation, dedication, and collaboration:
- Over 7,000 Cisco staff have accomplished our round design coaching. Our engineers and packaging designers have embraced Round Design Ideas, whereas govt help helped scale these efforts and obtain broad participation throughout the corporate.
- Our web-based Round Design Analysis Software now guides each new product and packaging design; merchandise should meet our rigorous Round Design Ideas and rating at the least 75% earlier than being launched.
- We’ve hosted teardown occasions with engineers, entrepreneurs, and provide chain companions, collectively analyzing merchandise to search out new methods to innovate for sustainability.
- We’ve celebrated revolutionary breakthroughs. The Webex Room Bar is one product that exemplifies Cisco’s round design technique, saving over 32,000 kilos of fabric yearly, utilizing 55% recycled plastic, and eliminating foam in packaging.
- Our governance mannequin with its Steering, Oversight, and Audit committees, retains us aligned, accountable, and at all times pushing for higher.
- Cisco created a Sustainability Knowledge Basis to consolidate and govern sustainability knowledge, together with round design. This platform allows exact evaluation and reporting, reminiscent of estimating product carbon footprints to raised perceive the advantages and efficiencies of round design ideas.
- These actions have been captured in our Objective Reporting Hub and annual Objective Report, highlighting Cisco’s dedication to transparency and measurable progress.
- And our cross-functional group’s dedication was acknowledged with a 2024 Cisco Pinnacle Award — the best honor for product and engineering innovation at Cisco.
Every of those milestones represents numerous hours of effort, suggestions, and partnership throughout our group and with our provide chain companions. It’s a testomony to what’s potential after we work collectively towards a typical goal.
Why round design issues
Because the worldwide chief in expertise that powers the Web, Cisco’s dedication has international attain. Cisco advances trade momentum by sharing round design greatest practices with international friends through teams just like the World Enterprise Council for Sustainable Growth and World Financial Discussion board’s Round Transformation of Industries initiative. For our communities, round design interprets into much less waste heading to landfills and extra environment friendly use of the sources all of us share. It’s about creating lasting, optimistic change within the locations the place we stay and work.
From a enterprise perspective, round design is equally highly effective. As extra digital infrastructure is constructed to help synthetic intelligence (AI) deployments, circularity helps make the very best use of important uncooked supplies and extends product life by methods like modularity. By designing merchandise that may be upgraded and repaired, we’re capable of lengthen their helpful life, which implies prospects get extra worth over time. This strategy additionally helps us cut back prices by saving on vitality and supplies, whereas supporting our enterprise and sustainability objectives. For instance, eliminating oil-based paint from the Catalyst 9000 product resulted in $9 million in financial savings whereas additionally decreasing about 318 metric tonnes of risky natural compounds (VOCs) and about 3,400 metric tonnes CO2e between Cisco’s fiscal years 2020 – 2025. In the long run, round design makes good enterprise sense and helps us ship even larger worth to our prospects, companions, and suppliers.
That is only the start
However this isn’t the end line — it’s only the start. As we transfer ahead, we’re dedicated to evolving our Round Design Ideas, studying from our experiences, responding to buyer wants, and persevering with to embed sustainability throughout our enterprise.
Thanks to everybody — our groups, companions, and suppliers — who helped us attain this unimaginable second. Collectively, we’re reworking our merchandise and packaging in ways in which profit our enterprise, our communities, and the atmosphere.