A taxonomy of circular economy indicators

Abstract

Implementing circular economy (CE) principles is increasingly recommended as a convenient solution to meet the goals of sustainable development. New tools are required to support practitioners, decision-makers and policy-makers towards more CE practices, as well as to monitor the effects of CE adoption. Worldwide, academics, industrialists and politicians all agree on the need to use CE-related measuring instruments to manage this transition at different systemic levels. In this context, a wide range of circularity indicators (Cindicators) has been developed in recent years. Yet, as there is not one single definition of the CE concept, it is of the utmost importance to know what the available indicators measure in order to use them properly. Indeed, through a systematic literature reviewconsidering both academic and grey literature -55 sets of C-indicators, developed by scholars, consulting companies and governmental agencies, have been identified, encompassing different purposes, scopes, and potential usages. Inspired by existing taxonomies of eco-design tools and sustainability indicators, and in line with the CE characteristics, a classification of indicators aiming to assess, improve, monitor and communicate on the CE performance is proposed and discussed. In the developed taxonomy including 10 categories, C-indicators are differentiated regarding criteria such as the levels of CE implementation (e.g. micro, meso, macro), the CE loops (maintain, reuse, remanufacture, recycle), the performance (intrinsic, impacts), the perspective of circularity (actual, potential) they are taking into account, or their degree of transversality (generic, sector-specific). In addition, the database inventorying the 55 sets of Cindicators is linked to an Excel-based query tool to facilitate the selection of appropriate indicators according to the specific user's needs and requirements. This study enriches the literature by giving a first need-driven taxonomy of C-indicators, which is experienced on several use cases. It provides a synthesis and clarification to the emerging and must-needed research theme of C-indicators, and sheds some light on remaining key challenges like their effective uptake by industry. Eventually, limitations, improvement areas, as well as implications of the proposed taxonomy are intently addressed to guide future research on C-indicators and CE implementation.

A Procedure to Support Systematic Selection of Leading Indicators for Sustainability Performance Measurement of Circular Economy Initiatives

“…From a theoretical point of view, our aim is to advance theory on CE development support using leading sustainability-related performance indicators. So far, the literature has either proposed newly developed indicators for CE, which mostly measure the intrinsic performance by accounting for the rate of resource recirculation [21] or focus on impact assessments. While being useful, the former do not account for a wide range of aspects related to sustainability (social implications, land use, etc.)…”

“…While being useful, the former do not account for a wide range of aspects related to sustainability (social implications, land use, etc.) [21], while the latter, despite well established and robust methodologies, either cannot assess dematerialized or performance-based CE strategies or provide results that are easily understood by industrial decision-makers [57]. The advantage of leading TBL indicators is in their ability to be understood, hence used, by industries, and to give early warning about potential sustainability impact of CE solutions.…”

“…So far, studies have concentrated on proposing methods to assess CE performance at a corporate level [16,17], at a product level [18,19] or at a material level [20]. However, due to the intrinsic focus of CE on value and material preservation [21], most of the proposed methods focus on measuring material consumption [22], with recycling being the most dominant CE strategy considered [23]. Additionally, the challenge lies in measuring the social dimension, which remains largely uncovered by the proposed indicators and methodologies [21,23].…”

“…However, due to the intrinsic focus of CE on value and material preservation [21], most of the proposed methods focus on measuring material consumption [22], with recycling being the most dominant CE strategy considered [23]. Additionally, the challenge lies in measuring the social dimension, which remains largely uncovered by the proposed indicators and methodologies [21,23]. To address these limitations, [24] have attempted to understand whether existing leading sustainability-related manufacturing indicators can be employed to measure a wide range of CE strategies from a social, economic and environmental perspective.…”

How to monitor environmental pressures of a circular economy: An assessment of indicators

“…Monitoring metrics to assess the progress toward CE are being debated (Elia, Gnoni, & Tornese, ; Mayer et al., ; Pauliuk, ) and recent attempts to develop general metrics differ in aim and scope, resulting in diverse coverage and focus (Elia et al., ; Iacovidou et al., ; Linder, Sarasini, & van Loon, ; Pauliuk, ; Tecchio, McAlister, Mathieux, & Ardente, ). Given the wide range of perspectives, formats, and scales, Saidani, Yannou, Leroy, Cluzel, and Kendall () suggest a taxonomy of different CE indicators. However, many reviews address specific aspects of CE, such as resource efficiency (Huysman et al., ), eco‐innovation (Smol, Kulczycka, & Avdiushchenko, ), or resource recovery from waste (Iacovidou et al., ).…”