Do Circularity and Resource Productivity Tell the Same Story? EU-27 Evidence for Planetary Health Measurement, 2010–2024

Planetary health depends partly on reducing the scale and impacts of material extraction, yet headline circular-economy indicators can reward different processes. This study asks whether the circular material use rate (CMUR), which describes the share of material use supplied by recirculated materials, and resource productivity (RP), which describes economic output per unit of domestic material consumption (DMC), provide interchangeable signals across the EU-27. Official Eurostat observations for 2010 and 2024 were analysed using Pearson and Spearman correlations, Fisher-z and non-parametric bootstrap confidence intervals, exact common-component decompositions, leave-one-country-out tests, and separate analyses of endpoint-change magnitudes and directions. In 2024, CMUR and RP were positively associated (Pearson r = 0.685, 95% Fisher-z CI 0.412–0.845; Spearman ρ = 0.638). The DMC-variance term numerically equalled 63.0% of the observed transformed sample covariance, with wide bootstrap uncertainty (37.5–192.9%) but a narrower leave-one-country-out range (53.4–77.0%). By contrast, the association between 2010–2024 endpoint-change magnitudes was weak and imprecisely estimated (r = 0.163, 95% CI −0.231–0.511). Directional agreement was high descriptively: all 22 countries with higher CMURs also had higher RP, while four had lower CMURs but higher RP, and one declined on both measures. The indicators therefore illuminate complementary dimensions rather than a single transition pathway. For planetary health assessment, circularity and efficiency should be interpreted with absolute and consumption-based material pressure indicators; neither CMUR nor RP directly measures health outcomes or ecological sufficiency.