A circular economy will need a society-level recovery system that takes all parts into account. One of the most serious challenges of operating a circular economy is reverse logistics, a major component of how the circular economy functions. The question of how to manage the recovery of waste-which might include such disparate items as working mobile phones, package waste, and inkjet cartridges-from billions of homes and consumers and get them back into the global materials pool so that the residual value of waste is captured and returned to being a resource is to be addressed if the circular economy is to move from theory to practice. Just some of the many needs of reverse logistics include asset tracking, materials recovery, dismantling, and toxic waste handling. Complexity of details necessitate that the design of reverse logistics and management of the circular economy will be some of the most highly refined systems thinking that modern society will ever create.