Policies that foster the transition towards a more resource efficient and circular economy are gaining significant traction. They are essential for a sustainable, low carbon development and for a competitive economy. These developments bring about demands for reliable information to track progress and gauge results and for indicators that speak to policy makers and the public at large.
The OECD has been supporting its member and partner countries in implementing effective policies for waste and materials management, improving their performance and providing reliable information to the public, decision-makers and authorities. Major tools for implementing shared policy objectives and advancing good practices in these areas are OECD legal instruments. The Recommendation on Resource Productivity calls for improving resource productivity and reducing negative environmental impacts of materials and product use. It recommends that Adherents promote integrated life-cycle-oriented approaches, develop and promote the use of indicators for assessing the efficiency of material resource use, and improve and use internationally compatible material flow accounts. The Recommendation on Environmental Information and Reporting calls for a comprehensive approach to environmental information and reporting. It recommends that Adherents improve the quality and policy relevance of data, statistics, and derived indicators on the environment and sustainable development, and develop and use sets of policy-relevant and reliable indicators to measure environmental performance and progress towards sustainable development, and to integrate environmental and economic decision-making.
This report presents a conceptual framework and indicators to monitor progress and inform circular economy policies and initiates a reflection on novel data sources and measurement methods that could help fill information gaps. It is designed to support OECD work on circular economy and provides a source of inspiration for countries seeking to build a coherent circular economy monitoring framework.
The report was prepared under the work programme of the OECD Environment Policy Committee (EPOC) and its Working Parties on Resource Productivity and Waste (WPRPW) and on Environmental Information (WPEI). The conceptual monitoring framework and the proposed list of indicators were developed with the OECD Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy Expert Group (RECE-XG) in co-operation with the UNECE Task Force on Measuring Circular Economy (UNECE-TF).
The authors of the report are Myriam Linster, Frithjof Laubinger and Peter Börkey. Shardul Agrawala, Head of the Environment and Economy Integration Division, and Nathalie Girouard, Head of the Environmental Performance and Information Division of the OECD Environment Directorate, provided oversight and guidance.
The work benefitted from the contributions and comments of members of the RECE-XG, members of the UNECE-TF, and delegates of the WPRPW and the WPEI. The financial support of The Netherlands, Finland and the United States of America is gratefully acknowledged.