The global organisation Circle Economy has published the Circularity Gap Report 2023 provides a framework and fact-based to measure and monitor progress in bridging the gap, year on year. Being able to track and target performance via the Global Circularity Metric will help us engage in uniform goal-setting and guide future action in the most impactful way. This year, Circle Economy has published the report in collaboration with Deloitte, the world’s largest professional services network.

How circular is the world?

Today, the world is 7,2% circular, a percentage that is getting worse year on year, driven by rising material extraction and use. Rising material extraction has shrunk global circularity: from 9.1% in 2018, to 8.6% 2020, and now 7.2% in 2023. This means more than 90% of materials are either wasted, lost or remain unavailable for reuse for years as they are locked into long-lasting buildings and machinery.

Each year we have smashed through the planet’s safe environmental limits. Today, five of the nine key ‘planetary boundaries’ (climate change, land system change, nitrogen cycle, phosphorus cycle and ocean acidification) that measure environmental health across land, water and air have been broken.

Solutions proposed in the Circularity Gap Report 2023

Adoption circular solutions will allow us to fulfil people’s needs with only 70% of the materials we now extract and use—moving human activity back within the safe limits of the planet. How? With four key circular actions:

• • Use less
• • Use longer
• • Make clean
• • Use again

The circular solutions proposed in the report cover four key global system:

• • Agrifood (no more avoidable food waste, go local, seasonal and organic, mainstream regenerative agriculture…).
• • Built Environment (be as energy efficient as possible, make the most of what already exists, prioritise circular materials and approaches, reuse waste).
• • Manufactured Goods & consumables (eschew fast fashion for sustainable textiles, buy what you need, extend the lifetime of machinery, equipment and godos, mainstream industrial symbiosis and efficiency…).
• • Mobility & Transport (embrace car-free lifestyles and roads, invest in high-quality public transport, rethink fuels and air travel, electrify remaining vehicles…).

Read more and download the full report here.