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Although the concept of circular economy is gaining increasing attention, there is a lack of tools or any agreed methodology for evaluating circularity. To date, circularity has been assessed mainly at product level, but national and regional level assessment is also essential in evaluating the effectiveness of circular economy strategies. As regions play an important role in implementing both EU and national strategies, the paper seeks to develop indicators for evaluating the circularity of material flows at regional level. In the case region of Päijät-Häme in Finland, the circular economy strategy is among the region's smart specialisation spearheads, and Päijät-Häme has a road map for moving towards a circular economy. The material flows examined in this study were phosphorous, plastics, textiles, waste wood and ash. While the region has high utilisation rates for plastics, textiles and waste wood, a significant proportion of material flows relates to energy production rather than material recycling. The present analysis highlights the difficulty of obtaining regional-level information on material flows; the available information and statistics relate mainly to waste flows or to national averages that do not necessarily reflect regional characteristics. For that reason, the indicators are based on circulation of waste materials rather than material circulation for the whole value chain from manufacturing to reuse and recycling. Nevertheless, the developed indicators provide a simple measure of circularity for regional material flows and can be further developed as more information becomes available.

The main impetus for utilising the biosludge from the neutral sulphite semi-chemical pulping process is the Finnish legislation which from 1st January 2016 prohibits the deposition of this residue in landfills in Finland. The dry matter content of the biosludge in this case study was low (12.1 mass %), meaning that incineration of this residue is uneconomical. The biosludge was rich in P (6260 mg kg−1). This, together with the high total organic carbon value of 459 g kg−1 and the metal concentrations (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, Zn and Hg) lower than the Finnish permissible limits for land application, supports wide and various end-uses for this residue. Except for S (27600 mg kg−1) and Cd (1.4 mg kg−1), the other heavy metal concentrations in the biosludge were lower than the maximum values for heavy metal concentrations in a non-contaminated soil referred to the literature. From the utilisation perspective, and in view of the high levels of S and Na, this residue could efficiently be used, for example, to landscape landfills.