The path to a circular economy is both new and profound, demanding a different perspective, experimentation, and the courage to choose a circular future. The Dutch circular finance initiative, known as the Kopgroep Circulair Financieren, is a public-private partnership that unites Dutch frontrunners in circular finance towards a common goal: Establishing circular financing as the norm by 2030.
The circular economy aims to minimise the use of new raw materials and products, maximise reuse, and reduce waste by creating a closed loop of production and consumption. It is essential for staying within the ecological boundaries of our planet, while simultaneously reducing the Netherlands' reliance on resources from other parts of the world. Financiers, investors, and other financial sector service providers play a key role in driving the circular transition. The Kopgroep Circulair Financieren addresses the challenges in financing circular entrepreneurs in the Circular Finance Roadmap 2030 (NL), to ensure that circularity becomes an integral part of financing assessments and investment decisions.
Since its inception in 2020, Invest-NL has been actively involved in financing circular propositions. The intensive collaboration with this diverse group of financiers and investors has yielded knowledge, new connections and valuable experience. This makes us a unique transition network, and this is how we make financing a circular future possible, says Anne Mieke van der Werf, Director Business Development at Invest-NL and Chair of the Kopgroep Circulair Financieren.
At the moment, one of the main challenges is to incorporate linear risks and circular opportunities in financing decisions (e.g. resource depletion, rising raw material costs, environmental damage). The group emphasises the importance of integrating circularity into the assessment of financing requests and investment decisions, to ensure business continuity.
The Kopgroep Circulair Financieren has collaboratively developed an open-source Circular Risk Scorecard. This scorecard aims to collect data to demonstrate that the risks of circular businesses are currently overestimated, while the opportunities are not adequately considered in financing or investment decisions. The Kopgroep Circulair Financieren calls on the financial sector to use the scorecard, providing insight into the circular risk score of the business (or project) to be financed and incorporating this score into decision-making for financing and investments.
To get started with the scorecard or for more information, please refer to this page (EN) or this page (NL).
Furthermore, the Kopgroep Circulair Financieren organises two deep dive sessions,
free to attend, on:
Tuesday 5 March from 16.00-17.00h;
Wednesday 27 March 16.00-17.00h.
Please register via Jeroen@copper8.com.
For general inquiries, contact: Hilde Sijbring (hilde.sijbring@circularfinancelab.nl).
For scorecard-related inquiries, contact: Jeroen van Muiswinkel (jeroen@copper8.com).
The Kopgroep Circulair Financieren is part of the Sustainable Finance Platform of the Dutch Central Bank.
About the Kopgroep Circulair Financieren
Established in 2021 under the Sustainable Finance Platform of the Dutch Central Bank, the Dutch circular finance initiative Kopgroep Circulair Financieren employs a project-oriented approach with core values being action, connection, and anticipation. The group operates with dedicated teams on impactful projects contributing to at least one goal on the Circular Finance Roadmap 2030. Members include representatives from financial institutions such as ABN AMRO, European Investment Bank, ING, Invest-NL, Royal Netherlands Institute of Chartered Accountants (NBA), Dutch Banking Association, Sustainable Water Bank, Rabobank, Regional Development Agencies, and Triodos Bank. Strategic partners include the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, Province of Utrecht, and Municipality of Amsterdam.
The Netherlands has made notable progress in recycling and waste management over the past years. However, the nation’s sheer volume of waste production hinders its goal of having a fully circular economy by 2050. On average, Dutch households produce 524 kilogrammes of waste per capita, which is above the European average of 517 kilogrammes per capita. This constitutes a total of 9.1 million tonnes of household waste generated in the Netherlands annually and underscores the need for robust waste prevention strategies.
Waste prevention is a far more impactful circular strategy than recycling and energy recovery. That is why the Netherlands is making efforts to cut waste at its source, encouraging its citizens to practice reduce, reuse and repair—the most effective circular R-strategies.
As part of these efforts, Rijkswaterstaat (RWS), the executive agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands, asked Circle Economy Foundation to investigate how cities can be designed to promote waste reduction among residents and small businesses.
The resultant report, titled 'Zero Waste Cities of the Future,' highlighted five circular urban policy instruments to realise a vision for a waste-free city. A city geared towards waste prevention would forgo certain features to make space for new, innovative facilities and logistic networks. These instruments can reshape the urban environment, making waste prevention appealing to both consumers and producers.
By implementing these urban policy instruments, Dutch cities can lead the way in sustainable, circular practices, creating an inspiring model for the rest of the world to follow.
The report can be downloaded via this link in Dutch and English.
Amsterdam, 24 January 2024—Over the past five years, the number of discussions, debates and articles related to the circular economy has almost tripled in spite of the global circularity rate falling from 9.1% to 7.2%. This is according to the Circularity Gap Report 2024, launched by Circle Economy Foundation today. The report moves from theory to action by identifying how the three main enablers of policy, finance and labour can drive sustainable progress worldwide.
In the last five years, humanity consumed a whopping 500 billion tonnes of materials—nearly equal to what was consumed during the entire 20th century. The global circularity rate has fallen steadily from 9.1% in 2018, when Circle Economy Foundation began measuring, to 7.2% in 2023. This means that out of all the materials consumed worldwide, we’re consuming more virgin materials than ever—while the share of secondary materials is in decline.
Accelerating progress toward a circular economy means addressing the root causes of linear impacts and changing the rules of the game to favour circular practices. The Circularity Gap Report 2024 outlines how policy, finance and employment reforms can reshape global systems to promote circularity.
‘Leveraging the Circularity Gap Report, stakeholders are able to prioritise their circular roadmap based on a data-driven analysis. Policymakers, industry leaders, and financial institutions can agree on focus areas and work collaboratively on the systemic change needed to stay within our planetary boundaries,’ says Ivonne Bojoh, CEO of Circle Economy Foundation. ‘To ensure the transition to a circular economy is just and fair, circular solutions must be designed with the world’s most vulnerable populations in mind, then these solutions will reduce inequalities across workforces and increase job opportunities worldwide.’
Ultimately, the report proposes a strategy to break free from flawed economic practices known to be socially and environmentally exploitative. This will require unlocking capital, rolling out bold, contextually appropriate policies and closing the sustainable and circular skills gap.
Policies and legal frameworks can incentivise sustainable and circular practices while penalising harmful, linear ones. Wealthy countries could achieve the most impact by adjusting regulations in the construction and manufacturing industries. Examples include incentivising retrofitting and reusing buildings (and their components and materials), developing certification and warranties for secondary building materials, setting standards for product durability, and strengthening the Right to Repair legislation.
In middle-income countries, fostering circular agriculture and manufacturing will be a top priority. Local governments could, for example, impose and enforce public bans and limits on pollution, mandate Extended Producer Responsibility schemes and require a minimum amount of recovered materials for all new production while directing funds to regenerative farming.
Lower-income countries could prioritise sustainable development through circular policies in construction and agriculture. These include relieving debt and improving access to development and transition capital, securing smallholder farmer rights and incentivising the use of local, organic and secondary materials in construction.
To unlock finance for circular construction and manufacturing in high-income countries, the study suggests rethinking accounting standards and practices as well as rolling out taxes to increase the price of unsustainable products.
In emerging economies, governments can shift subsidies away from polluting practices in agriculture and manufacturing and towards clean, regenerative ones. In addition, they can ensure all future investments align with ecological and social wellbeing standards.
Development and transition funds could be used in lower-income countries to support circular measures across key sectors like agriculture and construction—regenerative farming and smart urban planning, for example.
Finally, the report underscores the need to enable a just transition by bridging labour and skills gaps. This means education curricula—especially for vocational education—should include green disciplines and skills. Short-term courses could be a solution to meet the immediate and growing demand for green jobs, from renewable energy technicians to repair specialists.
In addition, developing countries could formalise informal employment and focus on making emerging jobs decent, inclusive and well-paid to ensure a just transition for all.
Read the report at https://www.circularity-gap.world/2024
We are a global impact organisation with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. We empower industries, cities and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. Our vision is an economic system that ensures the planet and all people can thrive. To avoid climate breakdown, our goal is to double global circularity by 2032. The Circularity Gap Report (CGR®) is brought to you by Circle Economy Foundation.
Structured evidence about circular strategies and their impacts—economic, environmental and social—is often not available to decision-makers. Instead, decision-making is oriented around linear data that does not adequately consider the quality of life and wellbeing of people and the planet. The Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative aims to bridge these knowledge gaps.
For questions and interviews, please contact Ana Birliga Sutherland, Writer and Editor at Circle Economy Foundation, at ana@circle-economy.com.
Key highlights:
NEW YORK, NY, US, 24 January 2024— Today, Deloitte and Circle Economy Foundation released the Circularity Gap Report 2024, finding the vast majority of extracted materials entering the economy are virgin, with the share of secondary materials declining steadily since the Circularity Gap Report began in 2018. The report identifies three main areas where reforms can help accelerate progress toward the circular economy: policy, finance, and employment.
The decline in circularity continues despite the concept of a circular economy—one that aims to help reduce consumption of virgin materials and keep materials in circulation—growing in popularity, with the volume of discussions, debates and articles on the topic almost tripling in the past five years. The report outlines how governments and industry leaders can move from commitment to action by adopting policies and frameworks that incentivise circular practices while penalising harmful ones, adjusting fiscal policies and practices to help create true prices that include the social and environmental costs of a product or service, funding circular solutions so that they can replace linear norms, and helping ensure their workforce is skilled and trained to support a just transition. The report also focuses on transformative circular solutions across the food system, built environment, and manufactured goods.
'Leveraging the Circularity Gap Report, stakeholders are able to prioritise their circular roadmap based on a data-driven analysis. Policymakers, industry leaders, and financial institutions can agree on focus areas and work collaboratively on the systemic change needed to stay within our planetary boundaries,' says Ivonne Bojoh, CEO of Circle Economy Foundation. 'To ensure the transition to a circular economy is just and fair, circular solutions must be designed with the world’s most vulnerable populations in mind, then these solutions will reduce inequalities across workforces and increase job opportunities worldwide.'
Along with the report, Deloitte also announced an exclusive partnership with Circle Economy Consulting, an impact consulting firm that is a spinoff of Circle Economy Foundation. The collaboration can help organisations realise circular economy opportunities from designing strategy, to implementing transformation, to measuring and reporting on progress.
'Successfully piloting and scaling circularity requires close coordination across business functions and supply chains. Through our relationship with Circle Economy Consulting and Circle Economy Foundation we’ll bring insights from the Circularity Gap Reports directly to businesses to unlock value. Combined with Deloitte’s end-to-end capabilities, this allows us to create new solutions to help our clients scale circular transformation at the pace and the ambition needed to realize significant commercial opportunity and enable sustainable and resilient supply chains', says David Rakowski, partner, Deloitte UK, who is leading Deloitte’s global circularity offering.
The collaboration can help businesses tap into a budding market projected to reach US$2-3 billion by 2026, and help them reduce material extraction while increasing the resilience of their supply chains. Drawing on the end-to-end capabilities of Deloitte’s Sustainability & Climate practice globally, the collaboration can help businesses with data analysis and navigating regulatory complexity to shape strategy, through to organisational transformation that places people and digital at the heart, to measurement and reporting.
'Implementing and monitoring circularity are becoming key success factors for businesses to both remain ahead of the game and to comply with anticipated regulation. In joining forces, Deloitte and Circle Economy Consulting will help actualise circular economy principles by empowering clients to take charge of their circular performance,' says Marc de Wit, Managing Director of Circle Economy Consulting. 'We’re looking forward to combining Circle Economy Consulting’s circularity expertise with Deloitte’s breadth of experience, cutting edge technology, and subject matter, industry, and transformation specialists to help businesses reach tangible and scalable results.'
'Prioritising circular efforts today can help organisations retain a competitive advantage while accelerating progress against their environmental goals. We’re proud to help businesses around the world address their environmental footprint, adapt their value chains, and shift to a circular approach,' says Jennifer Steinmann, Deloitte Global Sustainability & Climate Practice leader. 'Together with Circle Economy Consulting, we will continue to drive market discussion and collaboration by bringing Deloitte’s technology and strategy capabilities to designing, piloting, and ultimately scaling circular solutions globally.'
To read the findings of the Circularity Gap Report 2024, visit: https://www.circularity-gap.world/2024 and to learn more about Deloitte’s collaboration with Circle Economy Consulting, visit: https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/about-deloitte-uk/articles/circle-economy-and-deloitte-partnership.html.
About Deloitte
Deloitte provides industry-leading audit and assurance, tax and legal, consulting, financial advisory, and risk advisory services to nearly 90% of the Fortune Global 500® and thousands of private companies. Our people deliver measurable and lasting results that help reinforce public trust in capital markets, enable clients to transform and thrive, and lead the way toward a stronger economy, a more equitable society and a sustainable world. Building on its 175-plus year history, Deloitte spans more than 150 countries and territories. Learn how Deloitte’s approximately 457,000 people worldwide make an impact that matters at www.deloitte.com.
About Circle Economy Foundation
Circle Economy Foundation is a global impact organisation with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. The organisation empowers industries, cities and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. The Foundation’s vision is an economic system that ensures the planet and all people can thrive. To avoid climate breakdown, it is the goal to double global circularity by 2032.
Circle Economy Foundation is the owner of the Circularity Gap Report (CGRⓇ). Structured evidence about circular strategies and their impacts—economic, environmental or social—is often not available to decision-makers. Instead, decision-making is oriented around linear data that does not adequately consider the quality of life and wellbeing of people and the planet. The Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative aims to fill these knowledge gaps.
About Circle Economy Consulting
Circle Economy Consulting is a dynamic, impact consulting firm, committed to empowering forward-thinking leaders and businesses in identifying, evaluating and implementing circular solutions. To this end the firm follows a systematic and data-driven approach, supplying the practical steps and involving, inspiring and engaging stakeholders and employees along the way. The firm has more than 10 years of experience under its belt, delivering more than 100 business projects across industries and geographies working with industry leaders like Philips, Action and Rockwool. Drawing on the expertise of an international team with over 35+ years of combined circular economy experience, the consulting services are tailored to the unique needs of private sector clients. Learn more at www.circle-economy.consulting.
AMSTERDAM - Fashion for Good's Sorting for Circularity framework expands to address the challenge of ensuring rewearable textiles remain in use as opposed to finding their way into global waste streams or landfills. This 18-month project tests automated sorting technologies using artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimise the sorting of rewearable garments and enable greater circularity.
Global textile production and consumption have doubled over the past 15 years, while the number of times a garment is worn has dropped by 40%, averaging only seven uses before it is tossed away. In the EU, the amount of used textiles exported has tripled over the last two decades from slightly over 550,000 tonnes in 2000 to almost 1.7 million tonnes in 2019, and their fate is highly uncertain. Many of these garments receive the designation of "fit for reuse" and are later sold to second-hand stores across Europe or export markets like Africa or Asia. However, due to the sheer volume of these exported textiles and the lack of understanding of demand and criteria for resale across the industry, many ultimately end up in waste streams, landfills or incinerated.
As legislative changes loom in the EU, including Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes mandating accountability on garments placedon the market, and the Waste Shipment Regulation imposing stricter restrictions on textile exports outside EU borders, the volume of collected and exported textiles will continue to increase, underscoring the urgency for comprehensive solutions.
“As our Sorting for Circularity framework expands, we’ll be able to address the root cause of shifting the waste burden elsewhere. Addressing this requires an agreed upon framework for quality and resale potential in key export regions as well as developments in using AI sorting. This pioneering consortium will provide crucial insights for policy developments and investments towards a circular economy.” — Katrin Ley, Managing Director, Fashion for Good.
To address these challenges, Fashion for Good is expanding its Sorting for Circularity framework to address the challenge of sorting for rewearable textiles to understand better their resale potential and the demand across the second-hand market. While current Near Infrared (NIR) technology can determine garment composition, the task of assessing re-wearability is largely manual.
This project will test automated sorting technologies using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to collect product information — such as colour, style, garment type, and quality. This will enable sorters and brands to make better decisions and sort efficiently based on product data and criteria from local, European, and export resale market requirements, thus optimising the flow of textiles to achieve their highest value potential.
The findings will be shared in a report with a supporting business case and implementation roadmap to inform investment decisions in infrastructure, Circular Business Models (CBM) and repair centres.
The Rewear Project builds on Fashion for Good’s Sorting for Circularity framework initiated in 2021 and subsequently launched in Europe, India and the United States harmonising the collection, sorting and recycling industries in order to advance textile-to-textile recycling technologies and the resale industry.
“With this project, we hope to clarify the myths and half-truths on post-consumer waste dumping, but also salvage those by understanding the processes and journeys these garments travel. Then we can reach true circularity.” — Marieke Koemans-Kokkelink, Head of Sustainability, ERDOTEX.
The Sorting for Circularity Europe: Rewear Project is driven by Fashion for Good with catalytic funding provided by brand partners adidas, BESTSELLER, Bonprix, C&A, Inditex, Levi Strauss & Co., Otto Group, PVH Corp., and Zalando. Circle Economy Foundation leads the creation and implementation of the methodology, with support from Consumption Research Norway, Oslo Metropolitan University and Revaluate.
To ensure accuracy and representation in capturing data on the flow of textiles within the EU and export markets, this project will focus on specific geographical regions: Lithuania (Nordic/Baltic), the Netherlands (Western), Poland (Central-Eastern), and Spain (Southern Europe). The project also brings together the largest industrial textile sorters in Europe; including Erdotex, ModaRe, Humana People to People Baltic and Wtorpol, showing how different stakeholders — brands, sorters, and innovators — can work together to comply with evolving regulations.
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Circle Economy Foundation announced a leadership change today. Ivonne Bojoh, the current Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Director of Digital, will assume the role of CEO, succeeding Martijn Lopes Cardozo. Martijn, who has served as CEO for four years, will continue as a Senior Advisor while exploring new opportunities outside the organisation. We are truly grateful for Martijn’s efforts in the last four years as CEO and before that as Supervisory Board Member and are pleased he will stay on as a Senior Advisor to ensure a smooth transition.
Ivonne Bojoh has a distinguished career, spanning professional services as Partner and Managing Director of The Valley, a leading customer experience agency in Amsterdam and co-founder of a FinTech company in Singapore, scaling and transforming organisations. Ivonne joined Circle Economy in 2020 as Director of Digital and was promoted to COO in 2022, demonstrating her commitment to the organisation's mission and ability to drive impactful change.
The outgoing CEO, Martijn Lopes Cardozo, expressed his confidence in Ivonne's ability to lead the organisation: ‘I congratulate Ivonne on her new role. I have witnessed Ivonne operate in the last three years, and with her deep sense of purpose combined with a can-do mentality and bias to action, she is the right person to head up the organisation going forward. Leading Circle Economy Foundation during the last four years has been a great honour. It has been amazing to work alongside such an incredible group of “circlers”, funders and partners and together drive the transition to a circular economy with practical and scalable solutions.’
Founder and Chairman Robert-Jan van Ogtrop conveyed his positive outlook about the leadership transition: ‘We are very pleased Ivonne will step up as CEO. She is the right person to lead Circle Economy Foundation to deliver impact at scale. I thank Martijn for his leadership, initially as a Supervisory Board member and subsequently as CEO during the last four years. Under his guidance, the organisation has grown, further professionalised and solidified several new key strategic partnerships.’
Ivonne Bojoh shared her excitement about the next phase: ‘When Circle Economy was founded in 2011, the circular economy was still a relatively new concept. Today, we see wide adoption of circularity principles, and with that comes a shift for us to provide the “how” in addition to the “why”. Circle Economy Foundation is uniquely positioned to do just that. I look forward to leading the organisation and accelerating our impact to achieve our goal of doubling global circularity by 2032.’
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Circle Economy Foundation is excited to announce the launch of the Impact Report 2023. Following a year of firsts for the organisation, we turned our attention inward to take stock of our impact across the three levers of our Theory of Change: Analyse, Act and Scale. Read on to see some of our highlights from 2023.
To Analyse, the Circularity Gap Report Latin America and the Caribbean provided the first of its kind analysis in the region, finding that 40% of the region’s raw materials are exported—revealing the disparity between global material demand and local communities that bear the brunt of ecological breakdown. This year also saw the launch of the Circularity Gap Report for Cities, bringing the Circularity Gap Report to the local level: Munich was up first, demonstrating it can use 43% less materials than it uses now while cutting its consumption-based CO2 emissions by 23%.
To Act, Circle Economy Foundation developed a training programme with Oxfam to build the capacity of small- and medium-sized enterprises towards a green and circular economy. Our circular training model has so far been implemented across several countries: Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, Somaliland, Kenya and Cambodia.
To Scale our work, we have finalised our spin-off, Circle Economy Consulting, and are proud to announce that Deloitte will be its Scaling Partner. We have also been building capacity across key value chains via the UN-led SWITCH to Circular Economy Value Chains programme and our acquisition of Sustainability Games—an educational tool for teaching circular principles. Sustainability Games was implemented by plastics companies in Morocco and textiles companies in Bangladesh via SWITCH to educate and inform workers on the ground.
Zooming in on the practical outcomes of our work, we’ve seen our research inform the creation of circular policies across Europe, the UK and Canada. For example, thanks to our Circle City Scan, Circular Montréal: Baseline Assessment, Montréal has released its public consultation document, ‘Towards a Montréal roadmap in the circular economy’, which will inform the creation of their future circular strategy.
Meanwhile, in Austria, the Circularity Gap Report Austria was presented to the Ministry of Environment in 2019. Four years later, the report has contributed to the country’s recent policy changes. The Austrian Cabinet of Ministers has now adopted a National Circular Economy Strategy. Following our analysis, the comprehensive policy document aims to boost circularity from 9.7% to 18% by 2030.
Wrapping up this year, we have empowered 30 businesses, three cities and four nations across three continents to become more circular. This contributes to the total of 150 businesses, 55 cities and 27 nations across six continents that we’ve aided over the past ten years. We’ve also trained more than 4,230 people in circular principles over the past decade.
These are just a few highlights from the Impact Report 2023. Download the full report to see how we’re making the circular economy a reality.
The World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) is an annual event organised by Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, that brings together leaders from business, government, academia and civil society to find circular solutions to the world’s biggest challenges. This year, Sitra partnered up with Circle Economy Foundation and the International Resource Panel to co-produce the event, shaping the programme, speakers and topics.
The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Turning circular visions into actions’. With this in mind, WCEF2024 will feature the most impactful circular solutions from around the world, guided by the latest scientific evidence. The programme is designed to facilitate targeted discussions around the key enablers of a circular economy: governance, finance, people and employment, and business and innovation.
‘We are pleased to announce our partnership to make this year’s World Circular Economy Forum the most impactful yet’, says Circle Economy Foundation CEO Martijn Lopes Cardozo, ‘Our experts have planned several days of exciting programming that will leave all participants feeling empowered and inspired to make the circular economy a reality.’
What sets this edition of the forum apart from previous iterations are the targeted discussions with clear outcomes, hands-on workshops and collaboration with two major players in Brussels: the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform (ECESP) and the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The ECESP will deliver a European track to the main event while the Belgian Presidency team will curate a full day of accelerator sessions on 17 April, including site visits to circular economy companies in Belgium.
This collaborative programme aims to facilitate a spirit of discovery, participation, learning and cross-sectoral, international coalition-building by advocating for a just transition to circularity. The forum will encourage countries worldwide to continue working towards a circular economy that holds people and the planet at its core. More details about the programme and speakers will be announced in January 2024.
WCEF2024 is brought to you by the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, Circle Economy Foundation and International Resource Panel in close collaboration with international partners. WCEF2024 will be hosted at the SQUARE Brussels Meeting Centre from April 15–18, 2024. The forum can also be joined online or from WCEF Studios around the world.
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