Article / Report

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Reduced use of fossil fuel energy sources and/or increased use of renewable energy

Reduce Energy Consumption

Producing transporation equipment and providing services for thetransportation of goods and people

Transportation and Logistics

Producing building materials and providing services to create residential and non-residential infrastructure and real estate


Construction and Infrastructure

Replace energy sources with less impactful alternatives and enact energy efficiency measures

Regenerative energy

Recover waste energy or generate fuels and energy from waste streams

Energy recovery from waste

Industry peers to industry peer collaboration to create joint value and identify synergies

Industry collaboration

Develop regenerative infrastructure

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policies

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

Sustainability experts from six multinationals identified opportunities to enhance urban sustainability in Turku, Finland. Collaborating under the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's (WBCSD) Urban Infrastructure Initiative, this is the first time a city has worked with global businesses to achieve sustainability goals.The UII team comprises GDF Suez, Toyota, TNT, Acciona, Siemens, and UTC. In series of workshops the UII team and Turku city officials debated the merits and practicalities of energy saving initiatives. This resulted in the identification of three broad areas where businesses could bring expertise to support the city's ambitious goals. They are city centre development, land use and energy. These will be achieved through better traffic management, building control systems and municipal energy management.The WBCSD UII project director, Christian Kornevall, said: "Working on this project has been enriching: we drew on our members' cross-sectoral knowledge and expertise to come up with workable, practical solutions. Their impacts will be felt by Turku's citizens as their quality of life improves. Very soon the majority of the world's population will live in cities. In order for urban environments to be both livable and sustainable, they need investment. This is why we are developing a suite of initiatives. Reviews are already underway for a number of cities across three continents."Turku's deputy mayor in charge of infrastructure, Jarkko Virtanen, said: "We have ambitious sustainability targets and this strategic, early-stage collaboration has helped us see how to achieve our vision. Sustainability cuts across different departments and working with companies from several sectors has helped us make the necessary connections and find the right solutions."Willfried Wienholt, the head of urban and corporate development for Siemens, said: "This first engagement in the UII project has proved the value of businesses being involved early in a city's sustainability planning. Our combined skills and experience, together with the city's knowledge, help transform cities' progress towards a sustainable future."In order to achieve the goals set out, seven high priority actions are recommended by the team. At the same time as being relatively easy to implement, they will have a high impact on Turku and comprise:• Biogas production – generating clean energy and producing compost by burning methane from decomposing vegetation, garbage and manure• Building automation – cutting energy used by systems such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning through electronic communication between equipment• Energy management – improving governance of the city's energy use to achieve consistent performance in areas such as public lighting and public buildings• Green logistics – cutting congestion by innovating with technology, supply chain features and collaborations• Green procurement – using the city's purchasing power to choose goods and services with lower impacts on the environment• Material flow analysis – analysing policies and performance to identify potential improvements, including necessary changes in people's behaviour• Traffic management systems – reducing bottlenecks and encouraging people to use multiple transport modes by providing real-time information on current conditions.UII provides multi-sector expertise to help transform cities' sustainability visions into effective and affordable plans.For more information visit our websiteCopy on this page is provided by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, sponsor of the Business on the Road to Rio hub

Turku

World Business Council for Sustainable Development

UTC 

Acciona

City of Turku

Siemens 

Toyota

GDF Suez

Sustainability experts from six multinationals identified opportunities to enhance urban sustainability in Turku, Finland. Collaborating under the World Business Council for Sustainable Development's (WBCSD) Urban Infrastructure Initiative, this is the first time a city has worked with global businesses to achieve sustainability goals. The collaboration's focus is city-centre development, land use and energy. These will be achieved through better traffic management, building control systems and municipal energy management. More specifically, the programme has seven priority areas such as green procurement, clean energy, clean mobility and traffic management systems, and green logistics.

Collaborative sustainability programme in Turku

CAT Africa

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Scalability

Providing public and private education and support services at any level or for any profession, and governmental and public administration services, including judicial, regulatory, and legislative activities, taxation, defence, public order and safety, immigration services, foreign affairs and the administration of government programmes

Education and Government Services

Solidify definitions and create frameworks to support the understanding of the circular economy across contexts and maintain cohesive systems of data sharing, processing and storing.


 Knowledge Management

 The Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) tool, which is part of a broader ‘Circular Indicators Project’ developed by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Granta Design, allows companies to identify additional, circular value from their products and materials, and mitigate risks from material price volatility and material supply. Integrated with the MI:Product Intelligence package, MCI enables users to analyse and evaluate a range of environmental, regulatory, and supply chain risks for their designs and products.
MCI measures how restorative the material flows of a product, which can be aggregated up to product portfolio, and even further up to company level. Complementary indicators allow additional impacts and risks to be taken into account. The indicators may be used by product designers, as well as for internal reporting, procurement decisions, and the evaluation or rating of companies.

Inputting material data into the MCI formula allows the participating company to review products to rigorously measure the circularity of material flows for selected products, with the option to aggregate for product portfolios, and up to company level. Ultimately, carrying out the methodology enable the company to support decision making on tradeoffs between circularity and the economic, environmental, and societal objectives on product design and materials procurement.
    The co.project group is expanded the MCI methodology to include biological materials and addressed some of the challenges associated with combinations of biological and technical materials. The group is also addressing some of the risk-based complementary metrics for biological materials.        Company Level Aggregator Tool   Download      MCI Product-Level Dynamic Modelling Tool  Download      Methodology An Approach to Measuring Circularity  Download      Project Overview An Approach to Measuring Circularity  Download      Non-Technical Case Studies An Approach to Measuring Circularity  Download         Together with the methodology, the project has contributed to the development of a commercially-available web-based tool that will provide businesses with the means to track their progress and ensure that their products fit a circular economy based business model. The Circularity Indicators tool has been developed by Granta Design, and integrated with the MI:Product Intelligence package, which enables users to analyse and evaluate a range of environmental, regulatory, and supply chain risks for their designs and products.  With MI:Product Intelligence, users can either import, build and edit bills of materials for products or designs through an easy-to-use web app, MI:BoM Analyzer, or they can work within a CAD system. In either case, users can run reports that analyse bills of materials in order to assess product risk and guide design decisions. As a result of the Project, a new Circularity Report, based on the methodology referred to above, is available in the web app. The Circularity Report analyses environmental, regulatory and supply chain risks alongside the Material Circularity Indicator.                                     The project was executed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation together with Granta Design, the world leader in materials information technology. It has been co-funded by the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union.  As part of the project, the methodology was tested by a group of leading European businesses with real product data to ensure its robustness and relevance economy-wide. In addition, several other stakeholders from investors, regulators, consultancies, and universities were involved in the project through virtual and in-person workshops to help refine the developed measurement approach.   

Switzerland

Europe

North America

Africa

Asia

South America

EIT Climate-KIC is a Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), working to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient society.



Climate-KIC

Measuring progress in the circular economy is challenging. What and how a company, organization or government chooses to its contributions towards a circular economy depends on its objectives, scope and intended audiences. Even within the private sector, the indicators, methodologies and target audiences for circular metrics vary greatly.&nbsp;As part of WBCSD’s circular economy program aims to achieve harmony in how individual companies measure their progress in the circular economy. This report evaluates the current landscape of circular metrics globally.

Circular Metrics -  A framework for measuring a
company’s performance in the circular economy

Research and facilitate new technological developments to aid the transition to a circular economy.

Research and Development

WBCSD and 30 companies shaped the Circular Transition Indicators (CTI) v2.0 to support business need for a universal and consistent way to measure its circularity. The CTI framework is simple, applicable across industries and value chains, comprehensive yet flexible, complementary to a company’s existing sustainability efforts and agnostic as to material, sector or technology.Although the use of common indicators for circularity performance is essential to accelerating the transition to the circular economy, the value of CTI for a company goes beyond the calculation in the guidance, analysis and explanation for how circularity drives company performance. The CTI process helps companies’ scope and prepare the assessment and interpret its results, understand its risks and opportunities, prioritize actions and establish SMART targets to monitor progress.  Version 2.0 comes a year after the launch of CTI v1.0 bringing three main additions in the existing methodology, including:
Water Circularity: As promised in CTI v1.0, this version now includes calculations for Circular Water Inflow/Outflow and Onsite Water Circulation.
CTI Revenue: Acknowledging growing investor interest for metrics that link circular and financial performance, the new CTI Revenue provides a consistent way to credibly respond to investor inquiries.
Bioeconomy Guidance: CTI v2.0 includes extensive instruction and interpretation on the bioeconomy across all indicators and process steps.If companies have already completed an assessment with CTI v1.0, the new content will not affect their performance. Ideally, CTI only became easier and more valuable with these changes. In order to support and guide companies through this process, we have partnered with Circular IQ to develop the CTI online Tool available at www.ctitool.com. Through the tool, CTI initiates value chain discussions, which are essential to accelerating the transition to the circular economy.We invite companies of all sizes and industries worldwide to demonstrate their commitment to the circular economy by measuring their circular baseline with the launch of this updated version of CTI in February 2021.View publication through the download button on the left


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Together with&nbsp;30 member companies WBCSD has developed a&nbsp;universal and transparent&nbsp;framework to measure circularity. The Circular Transition Indicators (CTI), now at its second edition,&nbsp;is a simple, objective and quantitative framework that can be applied to businesses of all industries, sizes, value chain positions and geographies.There is v1, v2 and a corresponding tool.