Circular in Theory, Linear in Fact

No reliable method exists to produce a single, comparable circularity score at the product level that captures both inflow (recycled content) and outflow (recoverability at end of life). ISO 59020:2024 provides indicators but they only account for the source of resource on the inflow side and do not capture whether the resource is recoverable at end of life. Inflow and outflow indicators must be considered together for a meaningful assessment, but no methodology reliably combines them. The fundamental problem: circularity is a system property being forced into a product metric.

The EU Digital Product Passport regulations will require circularity data for products sold in the EU, but ISO 59020 cannot deliver comparable product-level scores. Without comparable metrics, greenwashing persists because any company can claim circularity using favorable indicator subsets. Recycled-content claims and recyclability claims are measured independently, masking fundamental tradeoffs — a product made from 100% recycled material that is impossible to recycle at end of life scores well on inflow but fails on outflow, yet there's no framework to reveal this.

ISO 59020 was published in 2024 specifically to address this gap, but it provides a menu of indicators rather than a unified scoring method, acknowledging that product-level data is often unavailable pre-commercialization. ISO 59040 (Product Circularity Data Sheet, 2025) defines a reporting format but notes that SMEs lack the systems and data to implement it, requesting a "transition period." The Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) attempts a single score but relies on assumptions about end-of-life pathways that vary dramatically by geography and infrastructure. None of these approaches have product category-specific criteria for most product families — the methodology works differently for electronics, textiles, packaging, and automotive components, but no standard defines these differences.

Product category-specific circularity rules (analogous to Product Category Rules in LCA) that define system boundaries, required data, and calculation methods for each product type. The key missing science is empirical characterization of actual end-of-life material recovery rates by product category and geography — the gap between designed recyclability and achieved recovery in practice.

A team could select a specific product category (e.g., consumer electronics, packaging) and develop a prototype circularity scorecard that combines inflow and outflow metrics using available data, then test it on real products to identify data gaps. Alternatively, a team could compare ISO 59020 indicators with the Ellen MacArthur MCI on the same set of products to quantify how different methodologies produce different scores. Relevant skills: industrial ecology, product design, data analysis.