ETC CE Report 2025/3 Measuring environmental benefits of Circular Economy

14 Feb 2025

An Vercalsteren, Maarten Christis, Karolien Peeters, Philip Nuss, Jens Günther, Renato Marra Campanale

This report is the first output of an ongoing task in the European Topic Centre on Circular economy and resource use (ETC CE), that aims to contribute to the knowledge on the environmental potential of circular economy. It does so by developing a methodological framework that allows a quantitative analysis of the potential of CE to reduce environmental impacts i.e. climate change, air pollution and biodiversity loss. This report uses the Circular Material Use Rate (CMUR) as a case study to assess the environmental potential of different scenarios to reach the CMUR target as set out in the 2020 Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP), i.e. to double the CMUR within a decade. It describes the methodology that is used, the scenarios that are defined to reach this doubling target, the results and insights, along with key messages following from the assessment.