Abstract
Assessing product circularity performance is not straightforward. Meanwhile, it gains increasingly importance for businesses and industrial practitioners who are willing to effectively take benefits from circular economy promises. Thus, providing methods and tools to evaluate then enhance product performance—in the light of circular economy—becomes a significant but still barely addressed topic. Following a joint agreement on the need to measure product circularity performance, this paper provides an overview of mechanisms aiming to help industrial practitioners in this task. In fact, three existing approaches to measure product circularity performance have been tested on an industrial case study and criticized regarding both their applicability in industry and their accordance with circular economy principles. Although these methods and tools deliver a first and rapid trend of product circularity performance, the whole complexity of circular economy paradigm is far from being considered. In addition, operational guidance for engineers, designers or managers to improve their products in a circular economy context are missing. As a result, both recommendations for industrial practitioners and guidelines for the design and development of new frameworks, tools and indicators aiming at measuring product circularity performance are provided. This includes cornerstones, key requirements and practical implications to support enhanced circularity measurement that will be developed in further work, accordingly to circular economy paradigm and industrial reality.
Highlights
Circular economy is not fully a new concept but is rather based on a combination of fundamental and founding concepts such as, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) [1], Industrial Ecology, Biomimetics, Natural Capitalism, Regenerative Design, Cradle to Cradle, and BlueEconomy
In accordance with Sauvé et al [2], what is new is the momentum that this concept is gaining among business practitioners (e.g., Renault, Caterpillar, Danone, Cisco), consultancy firms (e.g., McKinsey Global Institute, Accenture Strategy), governments (e.g., China and European Union), non-governmental organizations or associations (e.g., Ellen MacArthur Foundation), and academics [3,4,5,6,7,8]
Experiments and analyses performed through the case study aim at providing additional and meaningful information to: (i) guide industrial practitioners in their products circularity assessment; and (ii) establish a list of key features for the development of new frameworks—including indicators and tools—aiming at an enhanced measurement and monitoring of product circularity potential
Summary
A particular interest of the circular economy concept lies in its compatibility and consistency with sustainable development—through its three associated pillars As key performance indicators (KPI) are widely used and acknowledged in industrial practices [9], developing appropriate circularity indicators appears to be relevant in the context of circular economy transition To date, this segment of circularity measurement is mainly handled and operated by consultancy firms, that are not strongly connected to rigorous academic and scientific research methods, relying upon their proper business and marketing expertises (e.g., the Circle Scan & Circle Assessment developed by Circle Economy cooperative [10,11] or the Closed-Loop Calculator developed by Kingfisher [12])
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