WBCSD and Circular IQ partner to scale up the circular economy uptake by business 

Partnership to create unique tool and support companies to identify their circular economy potential.

Geneva, Amsterdam, 02 September 2019 – The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and Circular IQ today announced their partnership agreement to co-develop an online tool in support of the Circular Transition Indicators (CTI)-framework developed by WBCSD over the past year. The framework, which has been pilot tested by 15 leading companies, aims to help businesses calculate, measure and monitor their progress in the circular economy with to scale up impact and improve strategic decision making.

Continued extraction of finite resources, climate and demographic changes will make it harder for businesses to provide the products and services necessary for a well-functioning global circular economy. And today the global economy is only 9% circular, which means that the pressure to accelerate the transition to a circular economy is growing. Successful circular initiatives will reduce dependence on dwindling natural resources and will create value for companies and their stakeholders.  

We look forward to collaborating with Circular IQ, an emerging innovator in the field of circular economy data-collection and reporting, said Brendan Edgerton, WBCSD’s Director for Circular Economy of WBCSD. “Our partnership will deliver a unique tool that will help many business measure and track progress on their circularity building more momentum and business action to move to the circular economy and deliver the solutions needed to build a sustainable world.

Our experience in collecting and digitizing existing data and using this data to improve decision-making, helps businesses to act and measure results”, said Roy Vercoulen, CEO and co-founder of Circular IQ. “I am very excited with this partnership. I believe our experience will help WBCSD to create tools, to support and empower companies to initiate actions to assess their circularity and start improving it.

Jeff Turner, Vice President Sustainability at DSM, the chair of the CTI development project in the WBCSD working group, said: For DSM as a purpose -driven company that focuses on circular solutions, it is important that we can measure our circularity through a commonly agreed framework by the business community. This tool will not only help companies individually in collecting data and performing the calculations, it also ensures consistent outcomes for any company that chooses to use it and therefore increases the robustness of the CTI framework.

Moving forward, consistent measurement metrics to assess circularity will be key. Circular IQ, and WBCSD are strongly aligned on the belief that our society faces major and global challenges regarding waste, pollution, resource depletion and global warming. Action and smart tooling are needed to effectively tackle these problems. The CTI-framework will help companies identify opportunities to improve their circularity and effectively address these challenges.

The two organizations are aligned in purpose, knowledge and expertise and look forward to starting their collaboration to bring the online tool for the CTI framework to life to provide companies across geographies and sectors with a tool that allows them to calculate, measure and monitor their transition to a circular economy. 

The online tool will officially be launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2020.