Business case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on the health and happiness of human populations

Well-being

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 green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Reduced use and withdrawal of water and rate of recycling and reuse of water

Save Water (SDG6)

Contributing to the improvement of biodiversity including species diversity, total number of protected species, and ecosystem health

Biodiversity

Producing agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

Processing and producing food and beverages for consumption

Food and Beverage

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Using <a href="https://echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals" target="_blank">materials that are not toxic or hazardous</a>.

Non-toxic materials and inputs

Grow countries globally account for 55% of all raw material extraction and 52% of the material footprint, while housing around 37% of the global population.

These are larger Southeast Asian countries and countries in Latin America and Northern Africa, as well as those with an economy in transition in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

Examples include :
- China
- Indonesia
- Brazil
- Mexico
- Vietnam
- Myanmar
- Egypt, ...

Large contribution to the overshoot of planetary boundaries—largely due to the consumptions of local materials in higher-
income (Shift) countries: these countries contribute 50% of climate change, 62% of nitrogen, 60% of phosphorus, 53% of freshwater use and 42% of land use change.

To find out what country profile your country belongs to, explore [this interactive story](https://circularity-gap.world) and search for your country on the final map.

Grow

The second biggest category in terms of resource use is the need for nutrition. Agricultural products such as crops and livestock require 21.8 billion tonnes yearly. Food products have short lifecycles in our economy, being consumed quickly after production.



Nutrition

- Consume mostly plant-based diets: Eliminate or decrease purchases of certain product categories by households as a consequence of a share of the population refusing or reducing consumption of animal-based food products.                                                                       The population is divided into segments (ks) and their purchases of food products change based on diet scenarios. Three main diets are identified: vegan (no animal-based food), vegetarian (no meat-based food), and Mediterranean (less meat-based food for fish and vegetables).

- Consume more balanced diets: decrease purchases of food product categories by households as a consequence of all (or a part of) population reducing overall calorific intake

- Eat less sugary foods and beverages
- Eat less processed foods

Saving: 1.32 Gt emissions and 0.42 Gt material use 

🍎 Healthy diet 

- Organic food, seasonal & fresh food
- Eliminate the need for chemical fertilisers and pesticide
- Regional-local food
- Produce your own food
- Sustainable biomass certifications
- Shift towards locally produced food in the hospitality sector with a policy focus on national food self-sufficiency.                   

Saving: 2.07 Gt emissions and 3.40 Gt material use

🍎 Sustainable food production

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

Whilst no two countries are the same, there are still obvious similarities between some of them, with discernible development patterns and parallels in evidence. Common problems and shared solutions help place unique country identities and individual issues in context.

Whilst this classification is far from clear-cut and exhibits some overlap, it does underline how the discourse on transitioning to a circular economy needs to account for both differences and commonalities, if we are to arrive at a more strategic and instructive analysis. It also allows to highlight a set of key themes that are likely to be central to the countries that fall under the respective profiles. 

Country profiles (Build, Grow, Shift)

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A framework to distinguish between different country profiles and their circular transition needs.

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

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


Crickets, known to pack a protein punch, are often touted as “the sustainable food of the future,” but the issue is far more complex than that, say University of California Cooperative Extension agronomist Mark Lundy and horticultural entomologist Michael Parrella, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, in research published today (April 15) in the Public Library of Science (PLOS ONE).
"While there is potential for insect cultivation to augment the global supply of dietary protein, some of the sustainability claims on this topic have been overstated,” said Lundy, who headed the research at UC Davis while seeking his doctorate in agronomy. “Our study demonstrates that the sustainability gains associated with cultivating crickets as an alternative source of protein will depend, in large part, on what the crickets are fed and which systems of livestock production they are compared to.”
More innovation needed
 Mark Lundy not only has studied crickets as a food source — he's sampled them as well. Credit: University of California 
“Insect cultivation is more likely to contribute to human nutrition at a scale of economic and ecological significance if it does not rely on a diet that competes with conventional livestock, but more innovation is needed for this to become a reality,” Lundy said. “Moving forward, the imperative will be to design cost-effective processes that enable large populations of insects to capture protein from underutilized organic waste and side streams."
Said Parrella: “Everyone assumes that crickets — and other insects — are the food of the future given their high feed conversion relative to livestock. However, there is very little data to support this and this article shows the story is far more complex.”
For the study, the researchers modified a UC Davis greenhouse into replicated cells.  They measured the biomass output and feed conversion ratios of populations of crickets (Acheta domestics) reared on food that ranged from grain-based to highly cellulosic diets. They found that the biomass accumulation was “strongly influenced by the quality of the diet.”
“The measurements were made at a much greater population scale and density than any previously reported in the scientific literature,” they wrote. “The biomass accumulation was strongly influenced by the quality of the diet, with the nitrogen concentration, the ratio of N to acid detergent fiber content, and the crude fat explaining most of the variability between feed treatments. In addition, for populations of crickets that were able to survive to a harvestable size, the feed conversion ratios (FCR) measured were higher (less efficient) than those reported from studies conducted at smaller scales and lower population densities. Compared to the industrial-scale production of broiler chickens, crickets fed a poultry feed diet showed little improvement in protein conversion efficiency (PCE), a key metric in determining the ecological footprint of grain-based livestock protein.”
“Crickets fed solid filtrate from food waste processed at an industrial scale via enzymatic digestion were able to reach a harvestable size and achieve an FCR and PCE similar to that of broiler chickens,” they wrote. “However, cricket populations fed minimally-processed, municipal-scale food waste and diets composed largely of straw experienced more than a 99 percent mortality before reaching a harvestable size.”
The researchers concluded that the potential for “Acheta domesticus to sustainably supplement the global protein supply, beyond what is currently produced via grain-fed chickens, will depend on capturing regionally scalable organic side-streams of relatively high-quality that are not currently being used for livestock production.”
'Gateway bug'
Worldwide, statistics show that crickets are the most widely cultivated insects for the human diet, and are considered the “gateway bug” to entomophagy. They are touted as highly nutritious, and much better for the planet — environmentally and financially — than livestock due to their comparatively efficient feed conversion. 
Lundy, who received his doctorate in agronomy in 2013 and his master’s degree in international agricultural development in 2010 from UC Davis, has engaged in entomophagy. Crickets? Yes. “I ate some of my experimental subjects, after weighing them for the research,” he said. He dusted them with cornmeal and Cajun seasoning and fried them in olive oil. He has also snacked on protein bars made with cricket flour.
“I'm all for exploring alternatives, and I am impressed by the amount of innovation that has sprung up around insect cultivation and cuisine in the last few years,” Lundy said. “However, I also think we need to be clear-eyed about what the sustainability gains are and aren't, and focus our innovative efforts and limited resources to where they will have the most lasting impact.”
Crickets are readily available in pet stores as food for turtles, frogs and other pets. Part of many human diets, they are considered delicacies or snacks in many countries. Cricket flour is now commonly found in protein bars, baked goods and protein powders.


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Global Bugs

<p>Global Bugs aims to combat the negative environmental impacts of animal agriculture with the help of sustainable, alternative protein made from crickets.</p>