Measuring sustainability in a consistent and systematic way across various types of businesses is a challenge. Every company measures impact differently. Not because they are trying to hide something or cover up indiscretions but because every company is fundamentally different in the products it produces, the materials it requires and the processes it employs to produce those products. Consider the differences between a train operator, a hospital, a manufacturer or a retailer. Their business models, supply chains, material flows and waste streams barely resemble one another. That’s the challenge with sustainability measurement. There is rarely one simple metric that captures everything in a meaningful way. And when metrics are simplified enough to work universally, they often become too abstract to provide real operational insight.

That’s why frameworks like the GHG Protocol became so important. Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions created a shared language for carbon accounting across organisations, even when their operations looked completely different. Now circularity is entering a similar phase. The emerging Global Circularity Protocol (GCP) aims to create a common methodology for measuring how materials flow through products, operations, and value chains. It aims to help businesses move beyond isolated recycling figures toward a more complete understanding of material circularity.

One of the most unique aspects about GCP is that it is not emerging as a purely regulatory initiative but rather a voluntary, collaborative framework being developed with input from major manufacturers, technology companies, sustainability organisations and policy stakeholders who increasingly recognise the business importance of circularity measurement and material visibility. The initiative has involved organisations including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), the One Planet Network hosted by UNEP, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and companies such as Apple, Cisco, Google, IKEA, Panasonic, and Trane Technologies.

That industry involvement matters. It signals that circularity is increasingly being treated not only as a sustainability topic, but as a long-term operational and strategic business issue connected to material security, supply chain resilience, product design, and future competitiveness.

What the Global Circularity Protocol actually measures

At its core, the Global Circularity Protocol attempts to measure how materials move through a business across both operations and value chains. The methodology distinguishes between:

• materials entering operations
• materials retained within products and processes
• materials leaving operations during production
• and materials recovered downstream after product use

This distinction matters because circularity is not only about whether products are eventually recycled or returned through take-back systems. A significant portion of material loss often happens much earlier during manufacturing and operational processes themselves.

For example, an industrial motor may ultimately be recoverable at end-of-life due to its copper and steel content. But throughout production, substantial amounts of metal scrap, machining waste, packaging material, oils, and process waste may already leave the business as commercial waste streams. Some of these materials may enter secondary recycling markets. Others may be downcycled, incinerated, or permanently lost from productive use altogether.

The same logic applies in other environments like healthcare as well. An endoscope may contain components with high material recovery potential, but operational realities such as sterilisation requirements, contamination risks, packaging waste, disposable accessories and clinical waste streams create entirely separate material outflows during both use and maintenance phases.

This is why circularity measurement cannot focus exclusively on products themselves. It also requires visibility into operational material losses, commercial waste streams, recovery pathways, and whether materials remain in productive circulation after leaving the organisation. In practice, this means circularity calculations depend on understanding the full product lifecycle from upstream sourcing to operational waste generation, internal recovery systems and downstream treatment outcomes. Tracking material reintegration ratios across those diverse processes that include multiple different stakeholders both internally and externally within the company is a massive operational challenge.

Circularity measurement is fundamentally operational

Unlike carbon accounting, circularity measurement is tied directly to physical material flows and the operational realities surrounding them. Two products may both contain recoverable materials, yet their circularity potential can look completely different depending on how they are produced, used, maintained, collected, and recovered at end-of-life. Understanding circularity therefore requires far more than a single recycling figure. Organisations need visibility into material sourcing, production losses, product design, repairability, take-back systems, refurbishment pathways, downstream recovery outcomes, and whether recovered materials actually retain productive value after use. The comparison below illustrates how the same circularity principles can create entirely different operational realities across industries.

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The comparison also highlights why circularity measurement quickly becomes operationally complex in practice.

An industrial motor may appear comparatively straightforward from a circularity perspective because it contains highly recoverable materials such as copper, steel, and aluminium. But even here, the reality depends on far more than material composition alone. Circularity outcomes are influenced by production scrap, machining waste, maintenance cycles, disassembly design, refurbishment pathways, recovery infrastructure, and whether recovered metals are ultimately reintroduced into high-value industrial applications or downcycled into lower-grade uses.

An endoscope presents an entirely different set of challenges. While many components may still contain recoverable materials, the product exists within a heavily regulated healthcare environment shaped by sterilisation requirements, infection control standards, traceability obligations, contamination risks, and complex multi-material construction. In practice, these operational constraints can significantly influence how products are collected, separated, refurbished, recovered, or disposed of at end-of-life.

In both cases, circularity cannot be reduced to a single recycling figure or universal KPI. It requires understanding how materials move through the full operational lifecycle of a product from sourcing and manufacturing through use, recovery, reintegration, and potential material loss.

The diagram below illustrates some of the key circularity metrics organisations may need to monitor in order to operationalise circularity measurement across the full value chain.

Example circularity KPIs across the value chain

GCP is still in its development phase. Metrics and framework are not set in stone but we already have a directional idea as to the kinds of KPIs that businesses should be prepared to start tracking and reporting.

Upstream GCP Metrics

• % circular inflow: Percentage of incoming materials sourced from secondary, recycled, or renewable inputs rather than virgin extraction.
• Virgin vs secondary input ratio: Ratio between virgin raw materials and secondary/recovered materials entering production.
• Upstream material footprint: Total material intensity required upstream to produce purchased materials, including extraction and processing losses.
• Processing yield losses: Material losses occurring during mining, refining, smelting, or supplier-side processing before materials reach operations.

Operations GCP Metrics

• Scope B material inflow: Total material mass entering operational boundaries or manufacturing processes.
• Commercial waste recovery rate: Percentage of operational waste streams successfully recovered, recycled, or reintegrated into productive use.
• Internal recirculation rate: Share of materials internally reused or reprocessed within the organisation’s own operations.
• Production scrap rate: Percentage of material lost as scrap, offcuts, rejects, or process waste during manufacturing.
• Packaging intensity: Amount of packaging material used relative to product volume, weight, or unit output.

Downstream GCP Metrics

• Recovery potential:Theoretical proportion of product materials that could technically be recovered at end-of-life.
• Actual recovery rate: Real-world percentage of materials successfully collected and recovered after use.
• % circular outflow: Percentage of outgoing material flows that remain in productive circulation after recovery and treatment.
• Reintegration rate: Percentage of recovered materials successfully reintroduced into productive supply chains or manufacturing systems.
• Material loss / leakage rate: Share of materials permanently lost through landfill, incineration, contamination, or dissipation.

System level

• % material circularity: Overall circularity performance based on the relationship between circular inflows, operational losses, and circular outflows.
• Circular material retention: Percentage of material value retained within productive economic circulation over time.
• Material circularity revenue: Revenue generated from circular products, secondary materials, reuse systems, or recovery activities.
• Circular material productivity: Economic output generated per unit of material consumed across the system.

The data challenge behind circularity calculations

This is where many organisations encounter the real challenge. The information required for meaningful circularity calculations rarely exists in one place. Instead, it is fragmented across procurement systems, supplier declarations, ERP platform, compliance reporting tools, invoices and spreadsheets. And this complexity grows exponentially when businesses attempt to assess entire product portfolios across multiple sites, suppliers, and regions. Circularity measurement therefore becomes much more than a reporting exercise. It becomes a data infrastructure and operational visibility challenge.

Circularity measurement is also becoming a strategic business issue

For many manufacturers, circularity is no longer viewed primarily as a sustainability initiative. It is increasingly becoming a question of supply chain resilience, material security, and long-term competitiveness.

Over the past few years, global supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, tariffs, and growing competition for critical raw materials have exposed how vulnerable many industries are to linear sourcing models. Companies that depend heavily on metals, batteries, electronics, polymers, or rare earth materials are recognising that material availability itself may become a strategic risk. That is one of the reasons manufacturers are doubling down on circularity more aggressively than ever before.

The ability to recover, retain, and recirculate valuable materials internally creates a level of resilience that traditional linear supply chains simply cannot offer. A manufacturer capable of sourcing secondary materials from its own production waste streams, take-back systems, or recovery networks is significantly less exposed to volatility in raw material markets and geopolitical disruption. In some sectors, the ability to recover strategic materials from existing products or operational waste streams could eventually become business-critical. Rare earth elements, battery materials, technical metals, and high-performance polymers are all becoming increasingly important in discussions around industrial policy, energy transition, and supply security.

At the same time, regulatory pressure around recycled content, waste reduction, reporting requirements, and extended producer responsibility continues to increase. The result is that circularity is rapidly moving from a niche sustainability topic into a cross-functional business priority involving procurement, operations, product design, logistics, compliance, and executive leadership. Many large manufacturers now have entire teams dedicated specifically to circular economy strategy, material recovery, closed-loop systems and circular product design.

And while implementation remains operationally challenging, the potential upside is enormous. Beyond sustainability outcomes, organisations are pursuing circularity because they increasingly see the business value:

• reduced dependency on virgin materials
• stronger supply chain stability
• improved resource efficiency
• lower material costs over time
• increased recovery of high-value materials
• and greater control over long-term material availability

At the same time, the long-term cost of not building circular systems could become increasingly significant for businesses operating in resource-intensive industries. In many ways, this is a defining moment for industrial circularity.

Why operational systems will define the future of circularity measurement

The reality is that most organisations are nowhere near equipped to operationalise circularity measurement at scale. The required data is fragmented across product systems, supplier documentation, waste reporting, logistics providers, ERP platforms, recovery partners, spreadsheets, and disconnected sustainability tools.

And that fragmentation makes one thing almost impossible: getting a truly complete picture of how circular a business actually is.

That is exactly the problem Resourcify was built to solve. Resourcify combines AI-powered product portfolio circularity assessment with commercial waste reporting, take-back systems, and closed-loop program management in one connected platform. Instead of treating circularity as isolated reporting exercises spread across different departments and tools, the platform enables organisations to assess, pilot, launch, scale, and continuously track circular initiatives across the full material lifecycle. At the upstream level, Resourcify’s AI-powered Product Check analyses product portfolios using authoritative industry datasets to assess:

• material composition
• recycled content
• recyclability
• recovery pathways
• reuse opportunities
• take-back feasibility
• and closed-loop potential

Customers can further customise and refine this intelligence according to their own operational standards, supplier relationships, and product realities. But product circularity is only one piece of the equation. Unlike standalone product assessment tools, Resourcify also tracks operational commercial waste streams, downstream recovery outcomes, and the real-world performance of take-back and closed-loop programs.

That means businesses can finally connect:

• upstream material inputs
• operational waste generation
• downstream recovery
• and circular reintegration

inside one operational system.

And that is where circularity measurement becomes genuinely powerful.

Because once organisations can connect product data, waste flows, recovery outcomes, and closed-loop performance in real time, they move beyond theoretical circularity discussions and start building measurable circular operations at scale.

Ultimately, companies are trying to answer a deceptively difficult question:

How circular are we, really?

For most businesses, that answer cannot come from a single recycling figure, a spreadsheet, or a yearly sustainability report.

It requires connected operational visibility across the entire material lifecycle.