Poland is 10.2% circular: of all the resources it uses to meet its residents' wants and needs, nearly 90% stem from virgin sources. At 13.8 tonnes per person, per year, the country's material footprint is moderate—especially in comparison to other European countries. However, fossil fuel use (mostly coal) is high, and extraction significantly exceeds the EU average. This edition of the Circularity Gap Report presents six scenarios for change: by building its circular economy, Poland could cut its material consumption by roughly 40%, bringing it to a more sustainable level, while nearly halving emissions and doubling its circularity. The report also highlights the crucial role of collaboration in the transition to a circular economy, exploring opportunities for a two-way exchange of knowledge and learning between Poland and Norway.
This paper is the second outcome of a collaborative project between the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, RESPOND, Circle Economy and SYSTEMIQ. Through a series of interactive workshops, we developed a shared understanding of the ‘regenerative economy’ and, from our learnings, created tangible actions for changemakers to put the regenerative economy into practice.
Northern Ireland is 7.9% circular: more than 90% of the country's material use stems from virgin sources. At 16.6 tonnes per capita, the material footprint far surpasses the global average. This overconsumption exhausts our planet's vital ecosystems and threatens our quality of life. Our Circularity Gap Report Northern Ireland, however, finds that the country has the power to transform its economy: by doubling its circularity, it can halve the resources needed to fulfil its residents' needs and wants, opening up avenues to slash emissions and reach its net-zero goals.
The capital equipment industry has a key role to play in our goal of doubling global circularity by 2032—but for this to become reality, we must be able to measure and track progress in an actionable way. Metrics are critical to scaling circularity in the capital equipment industry, yet a number of gaps in current frameworks need to be addressed: complex concepts like value intensity, lifetime extension, avoided impact and Everything-as-a-Service are difficult to measure, for example. This paper explores these gaps and calls for circular metrics frameworks that set clear measurement boundaries at both the product or system level, to help capital equipment companies boost their circular performance.
The Netherlands has put forward the ambitious goal of a fully circular economy by 2050. But resting at the centre of a perfect storm, the built environment in the Netherlands is dealing with challenging environmental and social circumstances such as the climate and nitrogen crisis, a shortage of affordable housing and the biggest labour shortage seen in years. To uncover the state of circularity and related employment effects—both showing opportunities and providing recommendations for the Dutch built environment—this report applies the Circularity Gap methodology to a sector for the first time. It assesses the circularity of the Dutch built environment and sketches a path forward, highlighting key recommendations for actors.
This paper produces a circular economy jobs measure. Using jobs as a proxy indicator, these measure gives cities a robust number to indicate progress toward the circular economy and is designed to serve as a first step in developing a circular economy strategy.
The circular economy jobs measure tracks the inputs and outputs of goods in a city's ‘boundaries’ through the material import dependency of the city's economic sectors. At the same time, tracking and assessing the circularity of the local jobs in these economic sectors will also provide city leaders with an indication of which sectors circularity is happening and could potentially happen.
This paper also concludes that the process of coming to the circular economy jobs has two parts, the first more relevant to the local government and the second better influenced by the national government. Both need to come together for a truly circular local economy to happen.
Today's understanding of the circular economy fails to address issues of global social equity and threatens to exacerbate the divide between high- and lower-income countries, making it clear that a global circular economy will not be socially just by default. This report (and accompanying policy briefs) lays out the case for thinking beyond borders to achieve a sustainable, circular economy that matches environmental goals with social ambitions. It highlights key levers for governments and multilateral bodies, illustrating the benefits of a global, socially just approach to environmental, trade and development policies, and the risks of continuing along current policy pathways.
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This paper is the first outcome of a collaborative project between the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, RESPOND, Circle Economy and SYSTEMIQ. Through a series of interactive workshops, we will develop a shared understanding of the ‘regenerative economy’ and, from our learnings, create tangible actions for changemakers to put the regenerative economy into practice.
Building on the development of a harmonised Circular Jobs Methodology, Circle Economy and UNEP have embarked on the development of a City Typology framework that aims to bring a huge diversity of cities together into a more manageable and generalised set of types to support the transition to a circular economy.
The framework consists of four broad city types that are constructed from three variables, which influence the circular economy considerations of a city. The framework will continue to be developed to form practical pathways towards a more circular economy for each of the city types.
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