Waste management and related policies have in the past decades been moving towards preventive and integrated approaches, with emphasis on the life-cycle of materials and products. This is reflected in 3R "reduce, reuse, recycle" policies, resource productivity and sustainable materials management programmes, and in circular economy initiatives that gained significant political traction in recent years. Increasing attention is given to specific materials, waste streams and components that raise concerns as to the environmental and health impacts of their management and use or the security of their supply. Examples include food, plastics, electric and electronic products, or construction and demolition waste, hazardous materials, or critical metals.
These developments brought about stronger demands for reliable and more granular information to track progress towards a more resource efficient and circular economy. This includes inter alia information on waste generation and management, the value and supply chains of materials and products, the circularity of material flows in the economy, the underlying drivers and related socio-economic outputs and environmental implications. It also raised questions as to the adequacy of the data and indicators currently available for effectively supporting national policies and international work.
This report is a first step towards better information on a resource efficient and circular economy. It presents a harmonised conceptual framework and indicators for monitoring progress and supporting the development and evaluation of policies that foster a transition towards a circular economy (CE). The purpose is to assist countries seeking to build a coherent framework to assess progress towards a CE, and to support OECD and other international work on a CE. This report is not a statistical compilation guide. It rather provides general guidance for a harmonised monitoring through indicators and advocates the development of an indicator research agenda to improve information on a CE in a coordinated way and a phased implementation to allow for countries with different capacities to engage in the production of CE data and indicators.
The monitoring framework and indicators presented in this report will be regularly reviewed and refined as better data become available and the implementation and monitoring of circular economy policies in countries progress. They are supported with a statistical framework, consistent with the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) where possible, to help structure and combine underlying statistics, to link CE terms and definitions to the terms and definitions used in official statistics, and to ensure coherence among data sets (see (UNECE, 2024[1])). More detailed statistical and methodological guidance is being prepared with the support of the UNECE Task Force on Measuring Circular Economy.