Benchmark of Circularity Indicators and Links with Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Deploying the right circularity indicators (c-indicators) is key to assessing and improving the performance of products, companies, and regions from a circular economy (CE) perspective. Building on the initial taxonomy of c-indicators, this project extends the identification of sets of c-indicators to more than 100. Working with a think tank of CE experts from major French industrial companies, five new features have been added to better characterize a set of c-indicators to its practical use in an industrial context. These new features are: (i) CE spheres considered, (ii) life cycle stages covered, (iii) the availability of use cases, (iv) the popularity, and (v) transparency. Statistical trends and critical analysis on these c-indicators are then given. On this basis, a set of ten complementary c-indicators is particularly proposed, covering a wider spectrum of the CE paradigm, including, e.g., material flow, energy flow, impact, design, and corporate-based indicators. In practice, to support decision-makers in the industry (e.g., managers, engineers, product leaders, designers) compute and deploy appropriately these c-indicators, a new and highly visual factsheet for c-indicators is developed. Last but not least, discussion on the articulation, positioning, and potential trade-offs between c-indicators and LCA-based indicators are made through different scenarios and illustrative examples.