Craig Simmons, Anthesis' Chief Technical Advisor, provides insight on the EU Circularity Indicators, and how we're supporting clients through the use of metrics and embracing technology, to go round in circles

It has long been recognised that we need to dramatically improve the resource efficiency of our industrial and agricultural processes.

In the early 90’s Factor Four, a landmark Club of Rome report, speculated that we could – and should – reduce resource use by 75%, using existing technologies, by doubling output whilst halving energy and material inputs per unit of production.  The Wuppertal Institute went a step further, arguing that we needed to dematerialise production by 90% to allow for essential growth in poorer nations. This need for radical resource productivity improvements was later acknowledged by the original Factor Four authors who went on to embed the idea of a circular economy,  based on increased efficiency and high levels of reuse and recycling, in their 1999 treatise Natural Capitalism. In 2002, similar ideas were expounded in Cradle to Cradle, a book by Michael Braungart and William McDonough. Today such thinking is bolstered by legislation – such as the Landfill Directive and WEEE Regulations.

‘Doing more with less’ is both a financial and environmental imperative. Estimates vary, but studies have concluded that efficiencies delivered by the circular economy are likely to be worth in excess of one trillion dollars per annum (around 1% of global GDP).

Yet measuring and monitoring the success in delivering ‘closed loop’ products has always been problematic. Conventional life cycle analysis is essentially linear in its approach – a point recognised by the EU when it embarked on a significant research project to develop a Circularity Metric.

Today, the EU has finally published the Circularity Indicators Methodology. As one of the companies involved in its development, Anthesis is excited by the potential practical applications of this approach which finally provides a mean of measuring and managing the ‘circularity’ of a product.

On the back of the EU launch, Anthesis is pleased to announce an exciting new service offering based around the new Circularity Metric. Not only are we able to support clients in calculating the circularity of their product or organisation, but we are also able to draw upon our long experience of delivering the other complimentary indicators recommended by the EU; water, carbon, risk, toxicity and cost.

What is more, Anthesis have teamed up with Footprinter™ and Risk Horizon™ to provide the best in terms of support tools to ensure that our solutions are both scalable and use the highest quality evidence base.

Benefits of our approach include:

1. Easy insights into inefficiency hotspots
2. A single KPI of product circularity
3. Integration into a wider set of complimentary indicators; including risk, toxicity, greenhouse gas emissions and water
4. Inclusion of financial metrics highlighting potential and actual cost savings
5. The ability to scale up to a product portfolio; e.g. by market, sales channel or product category
6. Web-based data sharing, benchmarking and reporting

More broadly, we can help you re-imagine and re-engineer your organisation to embed circular economy thinking including:
· Strategy development and future proofing
· Technology reviews and options appraisals
· Business case development
· Stakeholder engagement, crowd-sourced innovation, supplier engagement, consumer testing
· Resource management; material reuse, recycling and disposal options

We look forward to hearing from you to discuss your requirements.

Craig Simmons is Anthesis’ Chief Technical Advisor and can be contacted at craig.simmons@anthesisgroup.com.