The framework consists of 21 complementary interventions, across six scenarios - one for each of the six societal needs we model. These interventions can mitigate climate impact by curbing GHG emissions

Note: interventions are currently focused on:
- 🏠 Housing 
- 🍎 Nutrition
- 🚗 Mobility
- 👚📺 Consumables
- 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Healthcare
-  🔊 Communication

These 21 interventions are spread across six societal needs and wants, with a set of solutions. Within these solutions are strategies on ’how to get there'.  

The framework moves beyond incremental action and provides solutions that will require behavioral change (dietary shifts towards less meat consumption, for example) and the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in the industry to mitigate emissions in hard-to-abate sectors (such as steel manufacturing). It illustrates how continued globalisation can benefit from the uptake of digital solutions. The combined interventions showcase the mitigation potential that begins where the current country pledges end; illustrating the additional impact our interventions can bring to the NDCs. In short, the interventions provide input for a more profound fundamental transformation than the more current pathways that make up the vast majority of NDCs. 

Together, the combined interventions can almost double the current global Circularity Metric of 8.6%, bringing it to 17%. 

This results in:
• Shrinking global material use and extraction by 28%. 
• Cutting global GHG emissions by 39%—fully closing the Emissions Gap as defined in our report and taking into account the updated NDCs.
• Allowing the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping at 1.5-degrees of warming by 2032.

*This framework was developed in the Circularity Gap Report 2021. Read more about it [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/resources/circularity-gap-report-2021)*






The need that represents the largest resource footprint, with 42.4 billion tonnes, is for construction and maintenance of houses, offices, roads and other infrastructure, especially in the developing world.

Housing

The second biggest category in terms of resource use is the need for nutrition. Agricultural products such as crops and livestock require 21.8 billion tonnes yearly. Food products have short lifecycles in our economy, being consumed quickly after production.



Nutrition

A considerable resource footprint is taken up by our need for mobility. In particular, two resource types are used: the materials to build transport technologies and vehicles like cars, trains and airplanes; plus, predominantly, the fossil fuels burned to power them.



Mobility

Consumables are a diverse and complex group of products - such as mobile phones, refrigerators, clothing, cleaning agents, personal care products and paints - that generally have short to medium lifetimes in society. Textiles including clothing also consume many different kinds of resources such as cotton, synthetic materials like polyester, dye pigments, and chemicals.




Consumables

With an expanding, aging and, on average, more prosperous population, healthcare services are increasing globally. Buildings aside, typical resource groups include use of capital equipment such as X-ray machines, pharmaceuticals, hospital outfittings (beds), disposables and home care equipment.


Healthcare

Communication and connectivity is becoming an ever-more important aspect of today’s society, provided by a mix of equipment and technology ranging from personal mobile devices, to data centres. Increased connectivity is also an enabler of the circular economy, where digitisation can make physical products obsolete, or enable far better use of existing assets, including consumables, building stock or infrastructure.


Communication

- Lightweighting, frugal design and lifetime extension of bearing elements
- Reduction in construction losses
- Local construction materials
- Energy-efficient appliances and use
- Lower room temperature and smart metering

Saving: 3.45 Gt emissions and 4.05 Gt material use 
 

🏠 Resource efficient construction

- Green roofs
- Passive houses
- Produce own renewable energy

Saving: 6.47 Gt emissions and 3.07 Gt material use 

🏠 Natural housing solutions

- Less living space
- Reduce the need for real estate activities by increasing occupancy of residential (Co-housing) and non-residential buildings (Multi-functional space)
- Limit residential stock expansion

Saving: 3.16 Gt emissions and 8.38 Gt material use 


🏠 Reducing floor space

- Refurbishment and renovation of residential and commercial buildings (e.g. passive house standard including reduction in overall energy demand). This could lead to displacement of new construction.

Saving: 2.15 Gt emissions and 5.28 Gt material use 

🏠 Increase housing durability

- Construction materials with recycled content
- Diversion of construction and demolition waste

Saving: 1.14 Gt emissions and 3.55 Gt material use 

🏠 Circular construction materials

- Hang-drying clothing
- Hot water saving
- Smart metering
- Better thermal insulation
- Lower room temperature

Saving: 1.96 Gt emissions and 0.79 material use

🏠 Resource efficient housing

- Replace traditional polluting stoves with clean ones

Saving: 0.97 Gt emissions and 0.41 Gt material use

🍎  Clean cooking stoves

- Consume mostly plant-based diets: Eliminate or decrease purchases of certain product categories by households as a consequence of a share of the population refusing or reducing consumption of animal-based food products.                                                                       The population is divided into segments (ks) and their purchases of food products change based on diet scenarios. Three main diets are identified: vegan (no animal-based food), vegetarian (no meat-based food), and Mediterranean (less meat-based food for fish and vegetables).

- Consume more balanced diets: decrease purchases of food product categories by households as a consequence of all (or a part of) population reducing overall calorific intake

- Eat less sugary foods and beverages
- Eat less processed foods

Saving: 1.32 Gt emissions and 0.42 Gt material use 

🍎 Healthy diet 

- Replace animal feed with agricultural or food waste
- Less packaging on food products
- Food sufficiency (keep caloric supply per person to 2,700 a day)
- Decrease purchases of food product categories by households as a consequence of all (or a part of) population reducing overall caloric intake

Saving: 2.07 Gt emissions and 3.40 Gt material use

🍎 Reduce excess consumption

- Organic food, seasonal & fresh food
- Eliminate the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticide
- Regional-local food
- Produce your own food
- Sustainable biomass certifications
- Shift towards locally produced food in the hospitality sector with a policy focus on national food self-sufficiency.                   

Saving: 2.07 Gt emissions and 3.40 Gt material use

🍎 Sustainable food production

- Telecommuting
- Reduced cargo shipping (for example, due to more local consumption)

Saving: 2.41 Gt emissions and 1.96 Gt material use

🚗 Reduce travel

- Fuel-efficient driving
- Car pooling-sharing

Saving: 1.83 Gt emissions and 1.64 Gt material use

🚗 Improve vehicle utilisation

- Recycle vehicles at end-of-use
- Use recycled metal and plastics for vehicles

Saving: 1.50 Gt emissions and 3.33 Gt material use

🚗  Circular vehicles

- Set fiscal and financial incentives for remanufacturing, refurbishing, repairing or upgrading vehicles
- Reuse of motor vehicle components
- Durable vehicle design and production
- Optimal vehicle repair and maintenance

Saving: 1.23 Gt emissions and 2.18 Gt material use

🚗 Vehicles durability

- Vehicle lightweighting (reduced demand for metal input into the vehicle manufacturing industry
- Increased fuel efficiency
- Autonomous driving (safer driving requires less need for crash-resistant cars)
- Use smaller cars

Saving: 1.22 Gt emissions and 1.24 Gt material use

🚗 Vehicle design improvements

- Use bio-plastic
- Use less plastic
- Use less chemicals

Saving: 0.96 Gt emissions and 2.50 Gt material use

👚📺 Chemicals free

- Recycle plastics
- Use recycled toilet paper
- Use recycled writing paper
- Increase recycled materials in furniture
- Start closed loop recycling of synthetic fibres

Saving: 0.31 Gt emissions and 0.45 Gt material use

👚📺 Circular consumables

- Less and more efficient paper use
- Less and more efficient and natural textile use
- Less and more efficient plastic use
- Less and more efficient furniture use
- Less and more efficient electronic goods use

Saving: 0.30 Gt emissions and 0.80 Gt material use

👚📺 Efficient design and use of consumer products

- Impose a minimum duration for consumables before which the sellers are obliged to remanufacture, refurbish, repair, or upgrade for free the product. 
- Repair
- Maintenance
- Sharing
- Secondhand use of textiles, appliances, furniture, machinery and equipment

Saving: 0.18 Gt emissions and 0.27 Gt material us

👚📺 Durable consumer products

- Repair, maintenance, and durable design of medical equipment 
- Substitute single-use medical items for reusable alternatives
- Virtual health care (ex. Doctor's appointments over Skype etc.)
- Medical equipment cascading
- Medical waste recycling

👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Circular healthcare 

- Buy smaller and lighter electronic devices
- Increased digitalisation 
- Cloud computing services

Saving: 0.19 Gt emissions and 0.33 Gt material use

🔊 Efficient design of ICTS

Global Circularity Gap Report

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An intervention-based framework for nations and stakeholders working towards circular countries

This collection features a selection of case studies, based on the global *Circularity Gap Reports*, that can mitigate climate breakdown by reducing virgin material consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The latest **[Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download)** reveals that the global economy is now only 7.2% circular and outlines how circular solutions across four sectors can bring global planetary boundaries back within safe limits. 

In the six years of the *Circularity Gap Report*, the global economy has extracted and used unprecedented amounts of materials. The first edition of the *Report *in 2018 found that global circularity was 9.1% and it has decreased every year since—leaving a Circularity Gap of over 90%. If this trend continues, we will have to find more and better solutions to combat the negative effects of climate change. This is why we have identified case studies from across the globe—based on the needs of society and planetary health—that serve as real-world examples of the circular economy in action.

Circle Economy is a not-for-profit organisation working to accelerate the circular transition. Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. With nature as our guide, we work alongside cross-sector stakeholders from academia, businesses, NGOs and governments to provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable interventions that transform circular opportunities into realities. 


To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the latest [Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).