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This collection features a selection of case studies, based on the global *Circularity Gap Reports*, that can mitigate climate breakdown by reducing virgin material consumption, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The latest **[Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download)** reveals that the global economy is now only 7.2% circular and outlines how circular solutions across four sectors can bring global planetary boundaries back within safe limits. 

In the six years of the *Circularity Gap Report*, the global economy has extracted and used unprecedented amounts of materials. The first edition of the *Report *in 2018 found that global circularity was 9.1% and it has decreased every year since—leaving a Circularity Gap of over 90%. If this trend continues, we will have to find more and better solutions to combat the negative effects of climate change. This is why we have identified case studies from across the globe—based on the needs of society and planetary health—that serve as real-world examples of the circular economy in action.

Circle Economy is a not-for-profit organisation working to accelerate the circular transition. Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. With nature as our guide, we work alongside cross-sector stakeholders from academia, businesses, NGOs and governments to provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable interventions that transform circular opportunities into realities. 


To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the latest [Circularity Gap Report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023#download), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).

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Global Circularity Gap Report 2023

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Business case

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Scalability

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Producing indoor products for the home and office, such as furniture, including upholstery, carpets and wall-coverings, as well as cutlery, cookware, glassware, crystal, silverware, utensils, kitchenware and household specialties

Home and Office Furnishings

Providing repair services or maintenance services for products or parts

Product maintenance, repair

Activities to clean, decorate, and restore products back to working condition for original or new purposes

Refurbishment, remanufacturing, renovation

Marketplaces or services that enable the second hand sale of own-brand products

Own brand second-hand sale

Providing products through leasing, rental, or pay-per-use models instead of sales

Leasing, rental, pay per use

VISION:
Products and services are designed for multiple use and material value retention, with maximum positive impact.

DETAIL: 
Imagine a time when…products flow via optimal collection and distribution streams into reusable and repairable product platforms. Reuse and access models are dominant, and products are designed for multiple recirculation before biodegrading (if designed to do so), or being broken down into reusable raw materials for production. People only consume what they need. Production and consumption wastes have been fully eliminated and multifunctional, season-less and timeless fashions are the norm, yet still fulfil our human need for expression and creativity without constraint. All business models, organisations, governments and citizens play a role in maintaining a healthy, functioning circular ecosystem.

Products and Services

Consumables are a diverse and complex group of products - such as mobile phones, refrigerators, clothing, cleaning agents, personal care products and paints - that generally have short to medium lifetimes in society. Textiles including clothing also consume many different kinds of resources such as cotton, synthetic materials like polyester, dye pigments, and chemicals.




Consumables

- Recycle plastics
- Use recycled toilet paper
- Use recycled writing paper
- Increase recycled materials in furniture
- Start closed loop recycling of synthetic fibres

Saving: 0.31 Gt emissions and 0.45 Gt material use

👚📺 Circular consumables

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

It is 2050.  Full systems change has taken place. This wouldn’t have been possible without the immediate action and radical steps taken from 2020 onwards. Many targets had to be identified in the early 2020s and achieved by 2030 to ensure that the 2050 goal happened in full. A sense of urgency, turbo stakeholder collaboration, supportive government regulation and clear, data driven targets enabled the mindsets and systems change needed to transform to a fully circular textiles ecosystem.

A circular economics model underpins what we have created. It reflects and supports a living organism made up of makers, users and restorers, interacting across vibrant and interconnected networks. Checks and balances, alongside transparency and accountability, ensure a healthy system. Financial, environmental, and social metrics have the purpose of serving communities and the planet. There is shared ownership of profit and loss – across all three metrics – throughout the value chain.

This is what we’ve achieved over the last 30 years:

WCTD Themes

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The framework consists of 21 complementary interventions, across six scenarios - one for each of the six societal needs we model. These interventions can mitigate climate impact by curbing GHG emissions

Note: interventions are currently focused on:
- 🏠 Housing 
- 🍎 Nutrition
- 🚗 Mobility
- 👚📺 Consumables
- 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Healthcare
-  🔊 Communication

These 21 interventions are spread across six societal needs and wants, with a set of solutions. Within these solutions are strategies on ’how to get there'.  

The framework moves beyond incremental action and provides solutions that will require behavioral change (dietary shifts towards less meat consumption, for example) and the adoption of state-of-the-art technologies in the industry to mitigate emissions in hard-to-abate sectors (such as steel manufacturing). It illustrates how continued globalisation can benefit from the uptake of digital solutions. The combined interventions showcase the mitigation potential that begins where the current country pledges end; illustrating the additional impact our interventions can bring to the NDCs. In short, the interventions provide input for a more profound fundamental transformation than the more current pathways that make up the vast majority of NDCs. 

Together, the combined interventions can almost double the current global Circularity Metric of 8.6%, bringing it to 17%. 

This results in:
• Shrinking global material use and extraction by 28%. 
• Cutting global GHG emissions by 39%—fully closing the Emissions Gap as defined in our report and taking into account the updated NDCs.
• Allowing the world to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping at 1.5-degrees of warming by 2032.

*This framework was developed in the Circularity Gap Report 2021. Read more about it [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/resources/circularity-gap-report-2021)*






Global Circularity Gap Report

An intervention-based framework for nations and stakeholders working towards circular countries

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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   Skip to main content         IKEA launches its new rental service, IKEA RENTAL, which gives companies access to furniture without needing to buy it. The IKEA RENTAL service will enable you to meet your furniture needs in a flexible way. We’ll find a solution to your needs.
   Our new IKEA RENTAL service is a future-proof and beneficial and solution. When you no longer need your furniture, you can choose to buy it for a fee or return it for free and we’ll find a new home for it.
   The IKEA RENTAL service takes care of providing you with the best furniture solution, giving you more time to focus on your business. We’ve put our best interior specialists at your disposal to create solutions designed especially for you.
   With IKEA RENTAL, you get all your furniture and services at a fixed monthly cost. Keep your costs under control from day one without a lot of expenditure and keep that money for your business.
 We know that getting started is always difficult and starting your own business can be very stressful. That’s why we want to make buying and organising your furniture easy and simple, so that you can enjoy the experience as much as we do and, above all, so that you get exactly what you want.
  
Design, quote and sign your IKEA RENTAL contract
We’ll analyse your needs, style, budget and goals so that our specialists can draw up a design and furniture proposal for you and your business. Once a design for your office has been agreed, our specialists will manage the necessary documentation and a validation will be carried out by the financial institution. Once the transaction has been approved, you will enter into the IKEA RENTAL service contract.
  
Implementation
We’ll coordinate delivery and assembly times. IKEA RENTAL is a complete solution — we take care of everything so you can focus on your business.
During the rental period
We’ll carry out an annual preventive maintenance to ensure that your office is as good as new. We also include accident insurance just in case, so you don’t have anything to worry about.
At the end of the rental period
When your contract is about to expire, we’ll get in touch and arrange to collect your furniture and get it ready for its new home. If you’d rather keep it, you just have to pay an extra fee and you can continue to enjoy it.
 
A full range of affordable services
Pay for what you use instead of the item
The monthly fee is deductible in the operational budget
Makes your cash flow easy to manage
Make investments without compromising capital
Maintain bank lending abilities
Freedom to return products or buy furniture and only pay an extra fee at the end of the contract.
If you return any items, IKEA will give them a second life.
 Want to know more about IKEA RENTAL? Get in touch for more information on how we can help your business with a more sustainable and comfortable rental solution.
Contact your local IKEA store here
 

 Renting office furniture has always been a common practice but now, the demand for renting home furniture is rising, especially among younger consumers who favor a flexible and mobile lifestyle. So, how does renting furniture make sense? 
Appeals a younger consumerReporter Leo Aquino wrote about his own experience renting furniture for Business Insider. He kept an eye out at sidewalks and websites like Craigslist for used furniture but quickly realized that reupholstering furniture and getting it shipped to his house is still a great expense. He eventually hit his breaking point with cheap furniture. So he explored options and found a rent-to-own option where he could buy the piece of furniture at the end of the lease by paying the remaining difference. His couch costs $59 per month and the bed frame costs $19 per month, totaling to $105.19 with fees and taxes. He doesn’t need to worry about storing or selling items and can have the decor that he desires without shelling out $1,500 on a nice couch, making it an affordable option. A more sustainable optionBrands like Ikea are exploring leasing models in hopes of transitioning into a circular business model by 2030, with hopes of using only renewable or recycled raw material. The company had introduced a limited rollout of Ikea Rental in six markets during 2021, per CNBC News — Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain and Poland. Renting furniture can solve the problems of “fast furniture” which relies on cheaper materials. “People are tired of throwaway junk, and the furniture industry as a whole did itself a disservice years ago by trying really hard to move toward furniture that one would throw away,” said Kicki Murbeck, a circular business designer on Ingka Group’s circular innovation team. She expects refurbishing services to grow rapidly as well. “The circular furniture subscription service that we are testing isn’t only about the products as such, although they are of course very important, but is also about understanding what the customer needs and wants and to be able to meet those needs that might change over time,” Murbeck said.Companies like Cort, Feather, Brook, Aaron’s, Rent-a-Center, AFR and Fernish are already catering to this rising demand.  

 One of the outcomes of the past months is that Americans have been spending a lot more time at home than usual. Faced with extra hours living and often working in the same space, many have been channeling their energy into transforming their homes—creating more comfortable living and working conditions to accommodate the “new normal”.
This has translated into a renovation boom, with sales of home improvement supplies, furniture, and even paint all experiencing positive growth over the course of the year.
But there’s a hidden downside to that home or office makeover: furniture waste. Known in the industry as “f-waste”, furniture waste is often overlooked by businesses and consumers because it’s generated less frequently than other types of waste. Yet furniture waste disposal is highly problematic, and since furniture can’t easily be thrown out or recycled like other types of waste, it often gets dumped illegally, and eight times out of 10 simply ends up in a landfill. Furniture waste: The facts
According to the EPA, furniture waste generated by Americans in 2017 totaled a staggering 12.2 million tons, and 80.2% of it went to landfill. The agency also found that only 0.3% of the f-waste that was sent to landfill was recovered for recycling. To make matters worse, furniture waste doesn’t include items like carpets and rugs, of which Americans threw away an additional 3.4 million tons in 2017.
Part of the problem is “fast furniture”. Produced and sold by some of the biggest names in the furnishing and home improvement industries, these items are made using poor-quality materials and offered at prices so low that many people consider them disposable.
Combined, the low quality and value of fast furniture mean it’s usually too expensive or difficult to repair, sell, or donate, and it‘s much more likely to end up on the curb than the more expensive, robust furniture of previous generations. In fact, a UK survey found that one-third of people threw away still-functional furniture rather than selling or donating it.
And just like with fast fashion, the culture of fast furniture encourages consumers to update their home decor to follow constantly changing design trends. Tempted by annual catalogs promoting new and updated products, many people are eager to buy new furniture to replace the old, out-of-date pieces they already have.
There’s more to this story than glossy pages full of domestic bliss, however. Office furniture is actually the primary source of f-waste, accounting for an estimated 8.5 million tons of furniture waste per year. And with offices gradually downsizing to accommodate the shift to working from home, this figure is likely to increase over the next few years, at least temporarily. The problems with furniture waste disposal
So why is disposing of furniture so difficult? The primary factor, particularly with modern furniture, is what it’s made of. A single item is often composed of multiple different materials, including wood, metal, and various types of plastic, many of which are difficult to recycle. Taking furniture apart and processing each type of material separately is time-consuming and expensive.
Rather than solid wood, a lot of furniture also utilizes chipboard, which is made of chopped up pieces of wood sealed together with glues that contain toxic chemicals and is often laminated with plastic. Some older pieces of furniture also contain chemicals that are hazardous for health, like flame retardants. These materials are not only almost impossible to recycle, but also difficult and expensive to dispose of safely. Reducing furniture waste responsibly
Efforts are being made to reduce furniture waste by using the principles of the circular economy. Ikea, for example, has pledged to vastly reduce its footprint and become a “circular business” by 2030. As part of this initiative, the company is testing a buyback scheme where furniture still in good condition will be resold, and broken or worn-out pieces will be recycled into new Ikea products. There are also a number of startups focusing on furniture that are completely designed around sustainability and circular economies.
But what to do with the unwanted furniture you have now? Will municipal waste management pick up furniture? To avoid f-waste ending up in landfills, reusing and recycling are the two best options. Posting items on online forums like Craigslist or Freecycle is a simple and relatively hassle-free way to find a new owner, and those willing to do a bit more legwork can also find local charities who are happy to accept donated furniture.
In most areas, municipal waste management will pick up furniture, or offer a place for furniture waste drop off, but there’s little guarantee that it will be recycled. To recycle household furniture it’s best to search for a recycling center in your area that can handle f-waste.
Office furniture waste is problematic because of the sheer quantity of it that is generated in a short period. Yet unlike household furniture, office desks, chairs, and even cubicle partitions have many opportunities for a second life at schools and local organizations that may struggle to purchase new furnishings themselves. In some cases, the donated furniture may even make a business eligible for tax deductions, which help offset the costs of waste management. To learn more about recycling furniture and other types of waste, subscribe to our blog. Additionally, speak with one of our TRUE Waste Advisors to learn how to improve waste and recycling practices in your business.
Contact one of our TRUE Advisors today.
  

Poland

Spain

Denmark

Norway

Sweden

Finland

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Ingka Group

<p>In 2019, the FaaS concept was rolled out for test by the Ingka Group as part of IKEA's commitments highlighted in the company's sustainability strategy, particularly its hopes to transition to a circular business model by 2030, using only renewable or recycled raw material. By 2022, there are two created solutions, aimed at two target groups - businesses and individual customers.</p>