Measuring Circularity: State of the Art and Future Prospects

Circular Economy, or CE, is a topic that has increasingly been gaining popularity in the last 10 years. It is a vision of an economic model in which all stakeholders develop significant efforts to make resources stay in the system as long as possible. The value of this perspective lies in the reduction of the need to extract virgin reserves from the planet, thus increasing both the sustainability of human activities and reducing countries’ dependence on each other for critical raw materials. A key issue with CE is its measurement: several indicators have been drafted in scientific research for decades all over the globe, but few efforts have been made by Nations to adopt a unique set for all parties involved. This makes comparing countries and sectors difficult, especially at the regional level where truly little attention has been devoted so far. This work aims to research the articles published in the last years about CE indicators to collect, categorize and analyse them, to understand their state of the art worldwide in 2025, and finally to gain relevant insights. Public and private actors' initiatives are analysed from a variety of perspectives and to obtain public funding, a proposal for measuring businesses’ resource consumption and consequent waste production is presented and applied to a restaurant.