A better way for businesses to measure circularity efforts

The opinions expressed here by Trellis expert contributors are their own, not those of Trellis.​

For the last decade, circularity has been one of the most widely-supported ideas in sustainability: keep materials in use longer, design to minimize waste and reduce reliance on virgin materials. Yet, a circular economy hasn’t accelerated at the speed needed to match the scale of resource constraints, rising material costs and value-chain disruptions businesses currently face. 

This isn’t due to lack of interest or intent. It’s because circularity has been trying to scale without the basics needed for any major business transition:

• Common and shared definitions
• Consistent comparable measurement
• Credible verification methods      
• A practical way to operate across complex value chains. 

Circularity has had vision, but often lacks a supporting infrastructure. That’s where the Global Circularity Protocol for Business (GCP) comes in. The protocol, developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and One Planet Network, is a common framework for defining and measuring circularity in a consistent way that aids in decision making. By using it, companies can move away from the limitations of pilots and pledges toward performance they can manage, compare, value, disclose and communicate with confidence.

Circularity to date: too many definitions, not enough comparability

Companies that are serious about circularity run into a familiar barrier: everyone is measuring something, but not the same thing. Definitions vary by industry and geography. Organizational and product boundaries are inconsistent. Methods don’t line up. Too often, organizations end up reporting activity rather than impact — announcing a take-back program, for example, without being able to show what quantities were returned to productive use and at what scale.

The result is a crowded landscape of circularity metrics and claims that don’t translate across business units, value chains or financial markets. That fragmentation creates friction where it matters most: procurement teams struggle to convert circular goals into supplier requirements; product teams can’t benchmark design choices; finance teams can’t evaluate tradeoffs across initiatives; and investors struggle to assess credibility.

What’s more, circularity outcomes are shaped far beyond the company’s factories. They depend on upstream material sourcing, consumer use and return behaviors, and the economics of secondary material markets. Because of the breadth of data and information insufficiencies, most companies can see only part of that system, which is why circularity often becomes aspirational or gets measured only where data happens to be available.

Circularity as an operating system

Circularity also stalls for an organizational reason: it’s often treated as a sustainability program or research project rather than a business discipline and value driver. Even when projects succeed, they remain limited as one-offs. They aren’t leveraged to shape product design requirements, procurement strategies, risk management systems, executive incentives, or financial value and impact.  

The business case for circularity is real, but it often shows up in fragmented ways that are difficult to pull into one coherent financial performance narrative. Circular strategies can impact the bottom line by reducing material and waste-management costs, improve supply security and lower exposure to commodity volatility. They can strengthen revenue generation through regulatory resilience and customer loyalty. They can also unlock new revenue streams through repair, reuse, remanufacturing and service models. What many organizations lack is a consistent way to quantify these benefits across initiatives and communicate them in decision-grade terms.

If circularity can’t be measured credibly, it can’t be defended, and that matters in a high-scrutiny business environment. 

A new framework

If you zoom out, these barriers aren’t mysterious; they just aren’t framed correctly. But the GCP provides a decision-useful way to measure circular performance so companies can manage it like any other business priority. It also takes a broader view of what “circular” means in practice: not only keeping products and materials in the economy for as long as possible, but also reducing overall material use by narrowing and slowing resource flows.

To start, companies need to define circularity scope and boundaries upfront: which parts of the business, which materials, and which stages of the value chain. The protocol does this through operational boundaries that reflect a company’s direct and indirect control over its material flows, encouraging a system view that accounts for impacts and influence across the end-to-end value chain. This addresses a major weakness in many circularity claims, where results look strong because boundaries are unclear or inconsistent.

Next, companies map material flows across the value chain, focusing on how materials enter the system, how long they remain in use, and where value is lost. This shifts attention away from recycling rates alone and toward the full lifecycle of materials.

From there, companies select a standardized set of circularity indicators that emphasize outcomes, not just activity. The protocol is designed for imperfect data and improvement over time, rather than assuming precision from the start.

Crucially, those metrics are meant to be used, not just disclosed. The GCP is built to support decisions around product design, sourcing, capital allocation and risk management — not simply to populate sustainability reports.

Finally, the framework supports consistent communication of results, making circularity performance more comparable across products, business units, and companies.

This process is what differentiates the GCP from other  existing approaches. It doesn’t replace other standards or reporting frameworks, nor does it tell companies what targets to set or which circular strategies to pursue. Instead, it fills a gap that other frameworks often leave open: how to measure circularity in a way that’s consistent, comparable and useful for running the business, not just describing it.

By standardizing how circular performance is defined, measured and communicated, the protocol expands the performance lens. It allows companies to connect circularity to outcomes stakeholders increasingly expect to see: credible progress, clearer accountability and evidence that circularity is embedded into how the business actually operates.

When circularity metrics become consistent and useful in decision making, measurement and comparability become the bridge from ambition to management — and from well-intended projects to a scalable business discipline.