Towards a Holistic Assessment of Circular Economy Strategies: Introducing the 9R Index and Closed-Loop Index
摘要
Human activities’ environmental impacts can be significantly mitigated through the adoption of a circular economy (CE) approach in the production and utilisation of materials and products. To facilitate a transition to a CE, it is imperative to assess the degree of circularity in various scenarios. Accordingly, the measurement of CE strategies at the material and product level has garnered increasing interest in recent years. Consequently, a plethora of overarching guidelines and indicators have been developed, each offering distinct approaches for measuring the performance of CE strategies. However, despite the existing range of indicators available to measure the performance of CE strategies, a comprehensive set of indicators that integrates the hierarchical strategies proposed by the 10R framework and the butterfly diagram is currently lacking. As a pioneering contribution to the field, this study presents a novel set of indicators that aim to measure the effectiveness of CE strategies, considering the hierarchical levels established by the 10R framework. Moreover, this study employs the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) fundamental scale as a means of integration to aggregate the proposed indicators, into two proposed indices, named the 9R index and closed-loop index. This research study contributes to the field by offering a methodologically robust approach to comparing material flow analysis results, which streamlines the selection and comparison of appropriate CE strategies. The proposed approach will provide an easy-to-use data-informed tool to facilitate the transition to a CE and improve the environmental performance of human activities.