To what extent do circular economy indicators capture sustainability?

Abstract

Abstract The transition to circular economy (CE) implies an innovative approach to production and consumption systems, often requiring radical transformation of business models, corresponding products and services, and supply and value chains to achieve decoupling of resource consumption from value creation. There are dichotomous approaches to CE, the ones focusing on methods and tools to support industrial practitioners to plan, design and develop CE solutions, and the others, focusing on methods and tools to predict, monitor and evaluate CE by measuring its performance and impacts. Existing literature widely discusses the approaches to measuring CE performance by employing specific indicators, indices, calculators or assessment toolboxes. Despite the abundancy of approaches, it is rather unclear what CE performance is and what dimensions of it have to be evaluated. Furthermore, if CE is to bring positive results towards sustainability, the sustainability metrics need as much attention in the approaches to measuring CE performance. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the performance dimensions of CE in manufacturing context, where we highlight the discrepancy between what is suggested to be measured in the context of CE and the need for sustainability considerations. Moreover, we discuss the importance of complementing circularity metrics by leading sustainability indicators to ensure early sustainability consideration in CE transition process.