Practical Experiences from Publishing Circularity Indicators in Environmental Product Declarations

Circularity indicators are moving from internal metrics to verified, published claims used in procurement and accreditation, supported by standards such as ISO 59020:2024 and Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). Published circularity figures typically fix durability and recovery assumptions at the point of manufacture and are rarely revisited once a product is in service. Drawing on a review of 611 Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) records, 578 from 451 verified EPDs and 33 from other sources, we explain its rise as the leading disclosed circularity metric and identify a practical gap: the same figure must serve both as a stable declaration for selection and as a living measure of the circularity that is actually delivered. We show, through a mathematical decomposition of the MCI into three components and worked examples, that both purposes can be served without changing its underlying calculation, given a minimal shared dataset such as a Digital Product Passport (DPP). This is illustrated rather than empirically validated against real multi-cycle data, which is hard to come by. We close with the standardisation and data steps this dual use requires, seeking to support the evolution of circularity metrics and bring downstream user behaviour into scope.