Circulytics: Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s method to measure the Circular Economy

Rafael Perez Medina
July 12, 2022

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has developed a tool that aims to effectively measure how circular a company is, regardless of its sector or activity. They describe it as "a free company-level tool to measure the extent to which a given company has achieved circularity across all of its operations" (1). Circulytics is going to measure the circular economy performance (2) of a company. They separate it into several categories:

1) Strategies and Planning.

2) External Commitment.

3) Innovation.

4) People & Skills.

5) Operations.

Where each one has a basic percentage that could change depending on your sector. The Methodology they use tries to elucidate if the company solves or to what extent it solves the following problems:

1) Biodiversity loss.

2) Climate change.

3) Pollution.

4) Fragility of the Supply Chain.

On the other hand, we find some indicators such as GRP. CDP and WBCSD. The scores are alphabetical from A (best score) to E (worst score). The process is simple: The interested company registers on its page (3) to then make the application. Immediately you enter a period of 2-3 months to collect all the information. You then have 24-32 hours to upload the documents. After that you wait for your result.

Of the companies using the tool we found that 72% are headquartered in Europe. On the other hand, of the total Circulytics users 17% have more than 1 Billion dollars in annual revenue. After understanding what they call in the tool "Enablers" we have to move on to review the "Results". That refers to:

1) Flow of materials going in the direction of the biological cycle.

2) Flow of materials into the technical cycle.

3) Recirculation of materials in the technical cycle.

4) Use of Renewable Energy.

5) Circular services in the profit for services.

To date 1265 companies have registered and 194 have completed the assessment. We believe that these tools in addition to non-financial reporting with well-constructed criteria and standardization of criteria is the first step to understanding how a circular economy could work (or if it works). Other tools we recommend using to go into detail:

  1. Material Circularity Index (MCI)
  2. Circular Transition Indicators (CTI)
  3. Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

We invite you to review the tool and give us your opinion: Do you think the Circular Economy is measurable or does it have to refer to other variables?   

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

  1. Circulytics - Journey https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/resources/circulytics/journey

  1. Circular Economy definition, Comisión UE https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/economy/20151201STO05603/circular-economy-definition-importance-and-benefits

  1. Circulytics - Overview

https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/resources/circulytics/overview