Sustainability Atlas
Circular Economy·14 min read··...

Deep dive: Circularity metrics, LCA & reporting — what's working, what's not, and what's next

What's working, what isn't, and what's next — with the trade-offs made explicit. Focus on KPIs that matter, benchmark ranges, and what 'good' looks like in practice.

Despite growing corporate commitments and a near-tripling of circular economy discussions over the past five years, the global circularity rate has fallen to just 6.9% in 2025—down from 9.1% in 2018, according to the Circularity Gap Report 2025 by Circle Economy and Deloitte Global. This paradox reveals a fundamental challenge: organizations are increasingly eager to measure and report on circularity, yet struggle to translate measurement into meaningful material flow improvements. Meanwhile, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) landscape is accelerating rapidly, with approximately 17,000 Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) now published globally and 86% of manufacturers expecting to reduce carbon in product development by up to 30% through LCA-driven insights. The question is no longer whether to measure circularity, but how to do so in ways that drive genuine resource efficiency rather than mere compliance theater.

Why It Matters

The stakes for accurate circularity measurement have never been higher. Humanity consumed approximately 500 billion tonnes of materials in just the last five years—nearly equal to the entire 20th century's consumption—while only 6.9% of the 106 billion tonnes consumed annually comes from recycled or secondary sources. This "circularity gap" represents not just an environmental crisis but a strategic business vulnerability. Organizations that fail to understand their material flows face mounting regulatory pressure, supply chain disruptions, and reputational risks.

The regulatory landscape has shifted decisively. The European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) now mandates circular economy disclosures under ESRS E5, affecting roughly 50,000 companies. The EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and Digital Product Passport requirements are transforming how products must be documented throughout their lifecycle. In this environment, robust circularity metrics and LCA reporting are transitioning from voluntary best practices to legal obligations.

For product and design teams specifically, the implications are profound. Research from One Click LCA's 2025 Carbon Experts Report shows that 60% of architecture, engineering, and construction professionals estimate LCA adoption can reduce embodied carbon by at least 10%, with 23% achieving reductions of up to 30%. These gains are only accessible to organizations with mature measurement systems. Emerging markets, where infrastructure is still being built and supply chains are forming, have a unique opportunity to embed circular principles from the outset—but only if they can measure what matters.

Key Concepts

Understanding the circularity metrics and LCA reporting landscape requires familiarity with several foundational frameworks and their interrelationships.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) evaluates the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service across its entire life—from raw material extraction through manufacturing, use, and end-of-life disposal or recovery. Governed by ISO 14040 and 14044 standards, LCA provides the analytical backbone for understanding where environmental burdens occur and where interventions yield the greatest benefit.

Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) translate LCA results into standardized, third-party verified documents that communicate a product's environmental performance. Following ISO 14025 and sector-specific Product Category Rules (PCRs), EPDs enable comparability across products and increasingly include circularity indicators alongside traditional impact categories like global warming potential and resource depletion.

The ISO 59000 family of standards, published in May 2024, represents the first global consensus on circular economy terminology, principles, and measurement. ISO 59004 establishes vocabulary and six core principles (systems thinking, value creation, value sharing, ensuring resource availability, resource traceability, and ecosystem protection). ISO 59020 provides the standardized methodology for measuring and assessing circularity performance at regional, organizational, and product levels—replacing a fragmented landscape of competing frameworks.

The Material Circularity Indicator (MCI), developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, quantifies how restorative a product's material flows are, considering both input (recycled content, renewable inputs) and output (recyclability, actual recycling rates) dimensions. While Circulytics, the Foundation's broader company-level assessment tool, closed to submissions in August 2023, the MCI methodology remains influential and is increasingly integrated into EPDs under EN 15804+A2 requirements in Europe.

Circular Transition Indicators (CTI), developed by WBCSD with 30 member companies, offer a more quantitative, material-flow-focused approach. CTI v4.0, released in 2024, includes climate and nature impact indicators alongside circularity metrics, with sector-specific guidance now available for fashion and textiles, electronics, and buildings.

Sector-Specific KPI Benchmarks

The following table presents benchmark ranges for key circularity KPIs across sectors, synthesized from CTI implementations and industry reporting:

SectorRecycled Input RateDesign for Disassembly ScoreEnd-of-Life Recovery RateCircularity Gap (Linear Flow %)
Construction & Building Materials15–40%20–50%30–70%40–60%
Electronics & ICT5–25%10–35%15–40%55–75%
Packaging25–60%40–80%40–85%20–50%
Fashion & Textiles5–15%5–20%<15%75–90%
Automotive20–35%30–60%80–95% (metals)25–45%
Heavy Industry (Steel, Cement)10–30%N/A40–70%40–65%

These ranges illustrate that "good" performance varies dramatically by sector. Fashion and textiles face the largest circularity gaps, while automotive benefits from mature metals recycling infrastructure. High-income countries use approximately six times more materials per person than low-income countries, creating additional complexity for global organizations attempting to benchmark consistently.

What's Working

Standardization Through ISO 59000

The publication of ISO 59004, 59010, and 59020 in May 2024 marked a turning point. For the first time, organizations worldwide have a common vocabulary and measurement methodology for circularity. This replaces a fragmented landscape where Circulytics, CTI, GRI, and proprietary frameworks created confusion and prevented meaningful comparison. Early adopters report that ISO 59020's structured approach to setting system boundaries and calculating indicators reduces the subjectivity that plagued earlier assessments.

Digital Integration and Automation

Organizations investing in integrated software platforms are seeing dramatic efficiency gains. Tools like Makersite, which connects product design with deep-tier supply chain data, claim to deliver lifecycle insights up to 50 times faster than traditional methods. This speed matters: when LCA results can inform design decisions in real-time rather than after months of consultant-led analysis, actual product improvements become feasible. ASUS, using Circular IQ's CTI Tool, nearly doubled the circularity of its Zenbook S13 laptop from 35% to 65% by replacing virgin materials, incorporating renewable energy, and designing for modularity—all guided by rapid measurement feedback.

Sector-Specific CTI Guidance

WBCSD's decision to develop sector-specific CTI guidance—for fashion and textiles (January 2024), electronics (April 2024), and buildings (March 2025)—addresses a persistent criticism of generic frameworks: that they fail to account for industry-specific material flows and value chains. VF Corporation has publicly confirmed using CTI to align circularity work with climate, nature, and resource use goals, demonstrating that tailored metrics can drive strategic integration rather than siloed sustainability reporting.

EPD Proliferation Driving Purchasing Decisions

Research from One Click LCA shows that EPDs increasingly shape purchasing decisions in architecture, engineering, and construction. When buyers can compare verified environmental performance data, manufacturers face genuine competitive pressure to improve. The exponential growth to approximately 17,000 EPDs globally, accelerated by EN 15804+A2 requirements and green building certification systems like LEED and BREEAM, suggests that transparency mechanisms are gaining traction.

What's Not Working

Data Quality and Availability Gaps

Despite methodological progress, 73% of experts surveyed by One Click LCA express high concern about data quality in LCA for EPD development. The problems are structural: primary data collection remains expensive and time-consuming, generic databases contain outdated or geographically inappropriate values, and supply chain opacity makes Scope 3 emissions and upstream material flows particularly difficult to quantify. More than 80% of manufacturers cite high costs and complexity as barriers to EPD creation. Until data infrastructure improves, measurement precision will remain compromised.

Measurement Without Action

The Circularity Gap Report 2025 documents a troubling disconnect: while circular economy discussions have nearly tripled over five years, actual circularity has declined from 9.1% to 6.9%. Organizations are measuring more but changing less. This suggests that current metrics may be too disconnected from operational decision-making, too focused on reporting rather than improvement, or simply not reaching the engineers and designers who determine material choices. Circulytics data revealed that companies consistently scored higher on "Enablers" (strategy, innovation, skills) than on "Outcomes" (actual material and energy flows)—confirming that intent outruns execution.

Framework Fragmentation Persists

While ISO 59000 offers a unifying vision, the transition is slow. Organizations that invested in Circulytics (now closed), CTI, or proprietary systems face switching costs and uncertainty about how different frameworks map to regulatory requirements. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has published ESRS E5 mapping for Circulytics indicators, and ISO 59000 explicitly aims for regulatory alignment, but practical convergence remains incomplete. Product teams report confusion about which metrics matter for which stakeholders.

Sector-Specific Gaps in PCRs

For industries beyond construction, Product Category Rules enabling standardized EPDs remain underdeveloped. Cisco, for example, has publicly noted its inability to generate EPDs for networking equipment due to the absence of appropriate PCRs. This leaves significant product categories—consumer electronics, software services, logistics—without the infrastructure for verified environmental declarations.

Key Players

Established Leaders

Ellen MacArthur Foundation pioneered corporate circularity measurement through Circulytics (2020-2023), influencing over 2,000 companies and shaping the indicators now embedded in ESRS E5. Their ongoing thought leadership and network convening power remain central to the field.

WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development) developed the Circular Transition Indicators framework with 30 member companies and continues to expand sector-specific guidance. With over 2,000 accounts across 94 countries using the CTI Tool platform, they represent the most widely adopted quantitative circularity measurement system.

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) achieved landmark consensus with the ISO 59000 family in 2024, providing the first globally recognized standards for circular economy vocabulary, business model transition, and performance measurement.

One Click LCA has become the dominant platform for LCA and EPD development in the built environment, with extensive research on adoption patterns and carbon reduction potential driving industry benchmarks.

Emerging Startups

Circulor (London) provides blockchain-enabled supply chain traceability for raw materials, tracking 17+ commodities from extraction through finished products. Their September 2024 Series B of £25 million and partnerships with Volvo, Polestar, and BHP demonstrate market validation for transparency-first approaches.

Circular IQ (Netherlands) offers the CTI Tool platform integrating WBCSD's framework into practical software for measuring, improving, and reporting circular performance. Their case study with ASUS demonstrates measurable product-level impact.

Makersite (Stuttgart) provides product lifecycle intelligence software connecting design decisions with deep-tier supply chain data, enabling the rapid iteration cycles that make circularity improvements practical during product development rather than after launch.

Key Investors and Funders

Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Salesforce Ventures have backed supply chain transparency platforms like Circulor, signaling strong investor confidence in measurement infrastructure.

EU Horizon Europe provides substantial public funding for circular economy research, including methodology development and digital product passport infrastructure.

Circulate Capital focuses specifically on circular economy solutions in emerging markets, addressing the gap where material flows are growing fastest but measurement capabilities lag.

Examples

  1. Holcim (Switzerland) — The global building materials leader reports recycling 50 million tonnes of waste annually, with a target of 100 million tonnes by 2030. Holcim uses CTI to measure circularity performance across its cement, aggregates, and ready-mix concrete operations, demonstrating how heavy industry can integrate circular metrics into core business strategy.

  2. Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) (Netherlands) — The Dutch national railway measures the circularity of its train fleet using CTI methodology, with an explicit goal of achieving 100% circular trains by 2030. This application illustrates circularity measurement for durable capital goods with decades-long service lives—a category often overlooked in product-focused frameworks.

  3. ASUS (Taiwan) — Using Circular IQ's CTI Tool, ASUS increased the circularity of its Zenbook S13 laptop from 35% to 65% through targeted interventions: replacing virgin plastics with recycled alternatives, shifting to renewable energy in manufacturing, implementing take-back programs, and designing for modular component replacement. This represents one of the most documented examples of measurement-driven product improvement.

Action Checklist

  • Conduct a gap assessment comparing current measurement practices against ISO 59020 requirements to identify transition priorities
  • Map existing circularity data sources and identify critical data quality gaps, particularly for upstream supply chain material flows
  • Pilot CTI or ISO 59020 measurement on one product line or business unit to build internal capability before organization-wide rollout
  • Integrate circularity KPIs into design review processes so metrics inform engineering decisions rather than retrospective reporting
  • Establish sector-appropriate benchmarks using industry CTI guidance where available (fashion, electronics, buildings) or cross-sector ISO 59020 indicators
  • Prepare for Digital Product Passport requirements by documenting material composition, recyclability, and repair information at the component level
  • Engage procurement teams to incorporate circularity criteria into supplier evaluation and purchasing decisions

FAQ

Q: How do ISO 59000 standards differ from existing frameworks like CTI or Circulytics? A: ISO 59000 provides the first globally standardized vocabulary (ISO 59004) and measurement methodology (ISO 59020) developed through international consensus. Unlike CTI (business-developed, focused on material flows) or Circulytics (holistic company assessment, now closed), ISO standards carry the authority of national standards bodies and are designed to align with regulatory requirements. Organizations can use CTI's quantitative indicators within an ISO 59020-structured assessment, as the frameworks are complementary rather than competing.

Q: What's the minimum data requirement for meaningful circularity measurement? A: At minimum, organizations need mass balance data for key material inputs (virgin vs. recycled content), energy sources (fossil vs. renewable), and end-of-life pathways (recycled, composted, landfilled, incinerated). ISO 59020 specifies both mandatory and optional indicators, allowing organizations to start with core metrics and expand coverage as data systems mature. Primary data from actual operations yields higher precision than generic database values, but even industry-average LCA data enables directional improvement.

Q: How should emerging market companies approach circularity measurement with limited infrastructure? A: Emerging market organizations face both challenges (limited recycling infrastructure, sparse local LCA databases) and opportunities (greenfield design, less legacy system burden). Prioritize measurement of high-impact material flows first, use CTI or ISO 59020 frameworks adapted to local context, and leverage global supply chain partnerships for data where local sources are unavailable. Organizations like Circulate Capital specifically fund circular economy solutions in Southeast Asia and South Asia, potentially providing both capital and measurement expertise.

Q: Are EPDs becoming mandatory, and how do they relate to circularity metrics? A: EPDs remain largely voluntary but are increasingly required by procurement policies, green building certifications, and emerging regulations. The EU's EN 15804+A2 standard now includes circularity indicators within EPDs for construction products. Countries including the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are implementing CO₂ regulations based on EPD data. The trajectory suggests EPDs will transition from market differentiator to baseline requirement in multiple sectors.

Q: What's the realistic timeline for ISO 59000 adoption to become widespread? A: Widespread adoption typically requires 5-7 years following publication for major international standards. Given that ISO 59000 was published in May 2024, expect pilot implementations through 2025-2026, early-adopter mainstreaming by 2027-2028, and broad adoption aligned with regulatory enforcement by 2029-2030. Organizations beginning ISO 59020-aligned measurement now will have significant first-mover advantage in demonstrating compliance and operational experience.

Sources

Topics

circularitymetricsdesign for disassemblystandardscontaminationcomplianceMRV

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