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 aim to include Round Design Rules into 100% of latest merchandise and packaging by the top of our 2025 fiscal 12 months.
This aim, first set in 2019, displays years of partnership, persistence, and inventive 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 know-how 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 Rules that information choices throughout {hardware}, packaging, sourcing, and repairability — supporting consistency, scale, and accountability.
In the present day, we will proudly say we’ve reached our aim, 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 Rules, whereas govt assist helped scale these efforts and obtain broad participation throughout the corporate.
- Our web-based Round Design Analysis Device now guides each new product and packaging design; merchandise should meet our rigorous Round Design Rules and rating not less than 75% earlier than being launched.
- We’ve got hosted teardown occasions with engineers, entrepreneurs, and provide chain companions, collectively analyzing merchandise to seek out new methods to innovate for sustainability.
- We’ve celebrated modern 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 all the time pushing for higher.
- Cisco created a Sustainability Information Basis to consolidate and govern sustainability information, together with round design. This platform permits exact evaluation and reporting, akin to estimating product carbon footprints to raised perceive the advantages and efficiencies of round design rules.
- 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 staff’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 know-how that powers the Web, Cisco’s dedication has international attain. Cisco advances trade momentum by sharing round design finest 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 assets 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 assist synthetic intelligence (AI) deployments, circularity helps make one of the best use of crucial uncooked supplies and extends product life via strategies like modularity. By designing merchandise that may be upgraded and repaired, we’re in a position to lengthen their helpful life, which implies clients 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 targets. For instance, eliminating oil-based paint from the Catalyst 9000 product resulted in $9 million in financial savings whereas additionally lowering 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 better worth to our clients, 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 Rules, 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 setting.