Consumer-Centric Circularity: Conscious Changes in Lifestyle Towards a New Normal

Abstract

In the final chapter, we take a closer look at the role that consumers play in the transition to the CE. Ultimately, consumers must be willing to buy sustainable circular products over those products that have a single lifecycle. The CE can receive great impulses even from a single person or a small group of people as we have shown in the repair café and iFixit case studies. This can cause a ripple effect that can quickly reach millions of people all over the world. It is up to governments to spread awareness amongst their citizens, so they become responsible consumers, and play a role as one of the largest consumers in their own economy as well. We look at the city of Rotterdam for a collection of cases, specifically looking at several consumer initiatives and how the city has been improving its own consumption since governments are big consumers themselves. We end the chapter, and the book, by looking at the circularity gap and revisiting what has been discussed in this book regarding closing this gap.

Sven Kevin van Langen and Patrizia Ghisellini contributed equally to this work.

1 Introduction

This chapter seeks to explore the role of consumers and their influence in the transition towards the CE. The consumers’ demand for products and materials is an important dimension that captures their role in the transition. At the global level, over the past few decades, this demand for products has increased exponentially contributing to the huge exploitation of natural resources and the rise of global environmental problems such as climate change [1]. The UN, The EU, and national governments are increasing their efforts in addressing the challenges posed by the increasing consumption as part of the transition to the CE [2,3,4]. The EU, in its CE Action Plan, stresses that it is central to take into account the consumers’ perspective and promote their engagement [3]. The UN’ 10-Year Framework Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP) adopted in 2012 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development includes an action plan on consumer engagement and a series of targets for promoting responsible consumption under the Sustainable Development 2030 agenda (SDG 12).¹

This chapter begins by focusing on the ‘ripple effect’ (by considering the concept positively and constructively) in the current move to a CE and highlighting how a small change in the demand by individual consumers could generate larger and impactful effects in accelerating the adoption of the CE. This is because today’s globalized market with millions of consumers gives them the power to enforce change through their individual choices that either support or hamper the transition phase. Then, an overview of initiatives by governments and others to promote circular and sustainable consumption is provided followed by the description of indicators developed to monitor the signs of progress in consumption patterns towards more sustainable models involving circular principles.² These could also imply radical changes in people’s lifestyles given that CE is a driver towards sustainable development where environmental and social dimensions also play a role in the development path [5]. Further, the major drivers, challenges, and benefits of a circular lifestyle [6] that enable influencing and steering consumers towards a CE are presented. In this chapter, several case studies are documented. The first case study discusses consumer initiatives such as the Repair Café Foundation, an NGO that provides free repairs with the help of volunteers, and the second, iFixit, a web platform that provides service and repair manuals for free. We also revisit the case of Rotterdam and several initiatives taken in the city by and for consumers. Finally, visions for 2030 and 2050, and the circularity gap are discussed as a conclusion to the chapter and the book.

2 Impact of Consumers on Circularity: A Ripple Effect

Historically, firms were normally considered the drivers of paradigm shift through innovation [7, 8]. The impact of consumers and their role as co-developers is a recent field of study in the product and market innovation domain [9]. This study suggests that there are many ways in which consumers can influence product innovation and create markets. It can take one single person to start a movement to change the economy! For example, Greta Thunberg singly tried to influence the Swedish Government to consider and act in mitigating climate change. Her initiative gradually turned into a movement (the ripple effect) as students and activists across Europe joined and compelled their Governments to take measures to achieve carbon reduction and offsetting.

Other examples of the ripple effect related to sustainability are the observation of The Earth Day³ on April 22nd of every year and The Earth Overshoot Day. The Earth Day was first organized in 1970 as a local environmental movement that has grown into a globally celebrated one, with an intention of becoming more sustainable. The Earth Overshoot Day is that day in each year when resource consumption exceeds the earth’s capacity to regenerate those resources over the year.⁴ That means, each day after this, we are creating an ecological deficit by drawing the resource stocks and operating in an ‘overshoot’ which is unsustainable in the long run. The Earth overshoot day is gaining an increasing amount of media attention each year. It serves as a simple indicator of how human society is increasingly draining the ecological wealth on earth.

The precept of the ripple effect is that a single person or small group, or perhaps a single action, can be the drop that spreads far-reaching ripples throughout societies and the world, echoing into the future. In economic markets, the ripple effect often starts when a consumer notices a problem and seeks to fix it. Three types of logic are identified to changing a market, as listed below.

• 1. Incumbent legitimator logic, where existing providers (often firms) work with external stakeholders such as consumers;

• 2. Consumer activist origin, where consumers themselves take the lead and change or start a market;

• 3. Co-creator scenario, where existing firms and consumers innovate in tandem [10].

All three aforementioned cases can start with one consumer, or perhaps a small group that ends up having a far-reaching effect that spills over well beyond solving their initial problem. In the context of the CE, we are witnessing consumers creating such ripple effects and steering the economy towards circularity. Although the ripple effect in the aforementioned examples seems to have spread quickly in a short time, it generally does take longer. Nonetheless, this can have a profound impact and for that reason, it is important to study trends of consumerism and understand their implications on the economy. With this context, we will study two cases of consumers who started organizations aimed at increasing circularity in the consumer electronics sector through making repairs more accessible, but in very different ways.

Fig. 7.1

An overview of Repair Café’s in the Netherlands from 2019, 8 years after the founding of the Repair Café Foundation. Copyright OpenStreetMap contributors (see Footnote 8)

2.1 Case Study I: Repair Cafés and iFixit

In recent years, the market for electronics repairs has been shrinking in the developed countries. The main reason for this is that electronic products are becoming increasingly complex, making them difficult to be repaired and requiring highly skilled personnel and sophisticated tools and spare parts [11,12,13]. In this case study, we look at the non-profit Repair Café Foundation and the for-profit iFixit company, two organizations founded by groups of consumers who intend to make repairs easier.

In 2009, Martine Postma set up the first Repair Café in Amsterdam.⁵ As a former environmental journalist, she was well aware of how much waste society generates. She realized consumers tend to quickly throw away end-of-life products, to be replaced by something new, even if a simple repair could have extended that product’s lifespan. She got inspired by a design exhibit⁶ on the benefits of repairs and wanted to help people repair their products. This led to the first Repair Café in which a group of people with repair experience (most of them elderly and retired), came together in a conference room and helped neighbors. They quickly moved to a nearby community center and received increased attention from (social) media.

In 2011, Ms. Postma started the non-profit Repair Café Foundation that provided support in setting up new Repair Cafés. It started with new Repair Cafés in the Netherlands (Fig. 7.1) but quickly spread throughout Europe and other parts of the world. At the time of writing (2021), there are over 2000 Repair Cafés in the world, $\sim$90% of which are in Europe.⁷ Repair Cafés are present in almost every municipality in the Netherlands⁸ The Repair Café Foundation has also started a repair monitor program to track repairs performed in their cafés and gain quantitative data on product repairs.

Besides providing just repairs, Repair Cafés also serve social and educational roles. This is in line with other such ‘open workshop’ initiatives, which have a great potential to enable a granular CE beyond recycling [14, 15]. These alternative methods for reducing waste, such as repair, reuse, remanufacturing, and regeneration, originate primarily from small organizations that are often non-profit in nature. According to the studies, small organizations, such as the Repair Cafés, play an important role in raising consumer awareness on the CE [14, 15]. The high growth of Repair Cafés shows that there is still much potential in embracing the CE.

iFixit also provides a platform to facilitate the repair of consumer electronics. They provide a digital platform with standardized service/repair manuals and complete product teardowns provided by their team or by the community [16]. iFixit⁹ was started by two consumers who tried to fix their laptops but could not find instructions or spare parts. The founders, Luke and Kyle, wanted to provide easy-to-use repair manuals for free and also provide an online web store for spare parts and tools. Since its start in 2003, iFixit has become a platform with over 70,000 open access manuals for more than 30,000 devices. Together with instructional videos on YouTube, iFixit is one of the leading platforms for providing information on repairing consumer electronics.

iFixit also serves some social functions, such as in education.¹⁰ It is increasingly being used as an educational tool, integrated into educational courses [17,18,19]. It serves as an example of technical documentation and can be used interactively by instructors. This introduces students to circular practices by teaching them in-demand skills. iFixit has also become a database for qualitative and quantitative research as they gather narratives on successful and unsuccessful repairs. This has been used to analyze how consumers typically detect faults with certain products [20], or to learn statistical data about common faults and repairs that consumers face regarding their products. The geographical distribution of the platform’s users (as of 2020) is shown in Fig. 7.2 [21, 22].

Fig. 7.2

Copyright Mapbox and OpenStreetMap contributors

A study by J. Lepawsky mapped the distribution of iFixit’s active community members [22].

3 Embracing Circularity: The Role of Governments

When it comes to governments and their relation to consumerism, there are two major roles that a government can play [23]. First, there is the government itself as a consumer. Governments are usually one of the biggest spenders within any economy as they indulge in public procurements (purchase of goods and services using public funds). Therefore, a government must align its procurements to its targets in achieving a CE. Public procurement not only creates a direct demand for circular products/services, but also reinforces ties between circular businesses, improves their market position, and can impact larger parts of a supply chain [24]. Other consumers such as private businesses and individuals might also follow their government by investing in circular products [25].

Governments can also play a vital role in maneuvering consumer behavior through various initiatives such as imparting awareness on the CE, subsidizing circular products/services, amending regulations that form a barrier for unsustainable consumer activities [26]. Subsidies have a strong effect on the buying behavior of consumers [25]. Governments and their agencies can influence consumers by conveying information on the impact and availability of circular products directly and indirectly [27]. They can provide information platforms to guide consumers in creating a positive impact using their buying power or facilitate the creation of new labels or certifications that instill trust in products from recycled materials and remanufactured products. Governments can also exercise their authority to introduce new regulations/legislation or amend the existing ones that help stimulate the consumption of new circular products and services. As mentioned earlier, governments can monitor the societal behavior regarding CE practices using indicators. For instance, the EU actively monitors consumer activities through the following indicators ¹¹:

• Percentage of citizens that have chosen alternatives to buy new products: The alternatives considered are the purchasing of a remanufactured product, the leasing or renting of a product instead of buying it, used sharing schemes (e.g. car or bike-sharing);

• Coverage of the CE topic in electronic mass media, number of articles published: This indicator aims to track the interest in electronic mass media of the CE and its popularity across citizens.

Furthermore, classical economic indicators are also proposed in the same set of the above indicators related to:

• The annual turnover in the repair of computers and personal goods: The monitoring of repair is strategic in the move to CE since it extends the service life of products contributing to reducing the consumption of natural resources and the production of waste and the associated negative environmental impacts. The benefits are also socio-economic as the repair services create new economic and job opportunities. These benefits are tracked using the next indicator;

• The number of enterprises and employment in the repair of computers and personal and households goods: This indicator monitors across the EU countries the move to more circular business models and is then useful to evaluate the structural changes in the economy of the member states and the whole EU.

3.1 Case Study II: Circular Rotterdam—Consumer Initiatives

In Chap. 2, we discussed the case of Rotterdam’s approach to becoming fully circular by 2050. we now build on that case study by looking at several of the initiatives aimed at consumers that are supported by the city.¹² Much of the city’s efforts are aimed at encouraging bottom-up activities originating from entrepreneurs and existing businesses, many of which are focused on consumer issues. From the city’s web platform on their circular projects,¹³ we specifically filtered for ‘citizen initiatives.¹⁴ This gives us two cases to study in this section more in-depth to see how citizens helped the transition to the CE. Furthermore, we will look at several instances where the municipality of Rotterdam has committed to circular actions in its role as a consumer. Finally, we look at a way that the city government has tried to influence consumers.

The first case is called Wijkea, an initiative by volunteers to reallocate used furniture to people on welfare support/low income.¹⁵ It is specific to the Kralingen neighbourhood of Rotterdam and provides free pick-ups of old furniture and redistributes it to people that need it most, willing to accept used furniture with some wear. Furniture can be both given for free permanently or it can be temporarily loaned. Volunteers also help in restoring damaged furniture or maintenance (e.g., with a paint job). These restoration projects are just to teach skills to both people with long-term unemployment and interested volunteers, adding a socio-economic dimension to the project.

The second case is called Urban Mining with Credits, a start-up from Rotterdam that offers a form of crowdfunding where you gain shares, in the form of credits, in exchange for your electronic or polymer waste,¹⁶ this project is initiated in the nearby city of The Hague as well.¹⁷ Every kilo of e-waste or plastic equals one credit. The collected waste is disassembled and sold for reuse, upcycling, or recycling. After 30 months, any operational costs are deducted from the returns on the waste sales, the profits are redistributed to all people with credits. As with the Wijkea project, the labor for Urban Mining with Credits is mostly performed by people trying to build employable skills. Some of the targeted buyers of disassembled household waste are electronics repair stores that need spare parts and people that make 3D printer filament from shredded plastics and other polymers.

One area where Rotterdam tries to implement circular procurement, acting as a consumer, is road construction. There are two projects in this area. The first is the re-use of old concrete of decommissioned roads that is reused in the construction of new bicycle lanes.¹⁸ The new lanes are built, at all major layers, from recycled concrete mined from Rotterdam itself that is rebound using a bio-based resource that is a byproduct of the paper industry. Though in a way it is downcycling of the concrete, as bicycle roads have to deal with less weight than regular roads, it can still be fully utilized. In another road construction project, the city uses rubber that is recycled from old car tires to build more silent roads in residential zones.¹⁹ The use of recycled rubber for this purpose has proven to build durable roads that are 10 dB more silent than non-rubberized roads. Outside of road construction, the city is experimenting with greener alternatives to classical cement-based concrete. In one project, the cement in the concrete mixture was replaced by local household waste and used for building public benches.²⁰ In its production, a lot less $\text {CO}_2$ is emitted than with regular concrete, an additional benefit is that cement is normally hard to recycle²¹ while the household waste is in a second cycle already in this way. The initial research was funded by the municipality of Rotterdam and performed by the nearby Delft University, the city also is the first consumer of this new type of circular concrete for public benches and is studying its use for the construction of bridges.

Finally, by providing a web platform (see Footnote 13), the city is influencing consumers actively. Rotterdam’s city government has made a website where they provide news, information, and a collection of CE-related initiatives with the purpose to engage its citizens in the city’s transformation. They offer a monthly newsletter and are active on major social media platforms with accounts highlighting the developments in the transition to a CE. Their site provides information on how to be more circular as a consumer, and which nearby organizations might help with that. Providing several filtering options to find many different types of initiatives. Furthermore, the site provides information on who to contact if you have an idea you want to turn into a new initiative and where to get subsidies.

4 Circular Lifestyle: Challenges and Benefits

Consumers both in the EU and at the global level are becoming increasingly concerned about the environment and its problems²² and are also aware of their consumption habits having negative effects on the environment.²³ In the EU, consumers also show good awareness and attitude of the CE concept even if not uniform across the member states. Such attitude has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic since it can be considered an effect of the conflictual relationship between humans and nature. Consumers think it is important to reduce the use of resources, reuse products at the end-of-life and increase the lifetime of products.²⁴ Consumers are also aware of the positive impact of purchasing environmentally-friendly products on the environment and society (see Footnote 24). Changing consumption habits is one of the most effective ways of taking action to tackle environmental issues. In this regard, the concept of a circular lifestyle has also emerged. A circular lifestyle is one where consumer purchases and acts in such a way that a minimum amount of resources is lost from an economic system. Proponents and critiques of CE alike claim that CE on its own cannot succeed without lifestyle changes. We already discussed consumer behavior towards preferring circular products, but we must make more radical lifestyle changes to have the CE succeed [5]. Typically, this is done by following an xRs typology [28], the exact amount of ‘R’s often varying from advice to advice. Typical advice to achieve a more circular lifestyle is listed below.

• 1. Rethink the first R, entails that consumers rethink the vision of natural resources as available in limited supply and make less impact on them in everyday life.

• 2. Refuse is the practice of not buying products from companies that harm the environment. This can come from companies that have had negative publicity, but also by looking at how companies offer the products (e.g., packed in more plastic than necessary).

• 3. Reduce is the practice of using fewer resources. e.g., by replacing single-use plastics with durable replacements or saving leftovers.

• 4. Repurpose is the practice when one uses a product for a new purpose. This can happen for several reasons, perhaps the original use was not required anymore, or the product degraded to a point that it cannot be used for its initial function anymore.

• 5. Reuse is the practice of using products that have a previous owner. Often people lose the need for a product while it is still perfectly functional and buying such products on secondary markets can prevent an entire product lifecycle.

• 6. Repair is to fix a broken product. One can fix their product and keep using it, or have it fixed, but one can also buy broken products and repair them by themselves.

• 7. Recycling a product implies that the product is brought down to its base materials for use in the production of a new product. While this was typically hard to implement as a consumer, in some traditional crafts (e.g., carpentry) it is a viable option. Modern developments in 3D printing even make it possible to upcycle single-use plastics into durable products.

• 8. Rot also known as composting, is similar to recycling but specifically for food waste and/or gardening waste to replenish soils with fresh nutrients.

There is increasing evidence suggesting that circular practices alone will not decrease the consumption of primary materials [29]. These practices might increase the consumption of primary materials and this is termed as the CE Rebound Effect. By increasing the value at the end of the (first) lifecycle of a product through CE practices (as the ‘waste’ can still be used), one can also increase the value further upstream in the value chain and thus increase the supply of primary materials.

One of the proposed solutions to reduce waste is to reduce overall consumption. This is supported by the degrowth movement [5, 30], whereas most policies aimed at achieving a CE, including those of the EU, assuming that a CE will lead to a decoupling of economic growth from resource use [31]. Historically, there has been a strong correlation between the number of primary resources used in an economy and the size of that economy. The CE is often supported to lower that correlation. It was at first expected this would also lead to fewer primary materials being used over time, but now, there is evidence to show this is not necessarily true. The rebound effect might see an increased level of the economy per resource unit used, and not lower the absolute resource use [29]. Supporters of the degrowth movement emphasize the use of raw materials is often harmful to the environment and thus to protect it, societies must be willing to reduce economic growth to remain sustainable. While this theory started at the fringe, it has recently begun to attract some mainstream attention and is now, even studied and considered by the EU and the European Environment Agency²⁵ as well as by the UN [32]. A study by the EU’s Joint Research Centre found that the academic paradigm around degrowth is still evolving, with the latest developments focusing on how to measure its claimed benefits [33]. The Joint Research Centre states that more research should be done into measuring the benefits of degrowth, suggesting tests based on input-output modeling, material flow analysis, life-cycle analysis, or social surveys with a special focus on non-market value creation.

Degrowth can be achieved in several ways.²⁶ One can reduce the consumption by end-users, but another approach is by shrinking the supply chain. One way to shrink the supply chain is through urban farming. A concept that, while not new, has recently witnessed an increased adoption speed, more so in developed countries [34]. Urban farming is a form of urban regeneration where citizens grow their food communally in the city or privately at home. With modern advancements like hydroponics, this has become increasingly accessible. While seeds or saplings are often still procured from classic farms, much of the growing is done near the place of consumption and without any heavy machinery, drastically reducing the economic size of the food supply chain and the amount of (primary) resources involved. In the US, urban farming is practiced mainly by younger and more educated households and is rarely enabling the involved households to manage their consumption completely on their produce. Furthermore, the number of people (involved in urban farming) that abandon the practice is quite high, indicating that urban farming may not be a sustainable practice yet and needs to mature more in terms of implementation [35]. In Italy, urban farming has a long tradition, often being employed to alleviate poverty, and is being supported by local governments [36, 37]. It found its origin in the second world war when the people of Italian cities such as Bologna, Rome, Milan, and Naples faced a shortage of food [37, 38]. The interest in urban farming in Italy continued after the second world war. Moreover, the European debt crisis caused a renewed interest in urban farming in Naples and the rest of Italy, as part of sustainable development initiatives and is also implemented by people of older age [36]. Currently, Bologna has one of the biggest projects of urban gardening in Italy, comprising 47 hectares of municipality land. Overall, there are more than 2,750 urban vegetable gardens [37]. Noted developments have taken place in urban food forestry, which, unlike urban farming, is more often communally implemented [38, 39]. The use of land for urban gardens contributes to putting in circulation again urban areas that could otherwise end up abandoned due to degradation or subject to possible building speculations. In this way, urban gardens are contributing to change and redefine the landscape of a city according to the principles of the CE [37].

5 Closing the Circularity Gap: Vision and Road Ahead

As more governments pledge climate targets for 2030 and 2050-2060, with many of the major economies in the world aiming to be completely climate neutral by 2050–2060, a CE will play an increasingly important role in achieving these targets. The savings in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a result of circular practices will greatly reduce the investments required for the energy transition. To achieve the targets of the Paris climate agreement, a lot of the GHG emission reduction should be achieved by 2030, and to do so, transitioning to a CE can be a powerful driver, with a strong return on investment. While not every government is aiming to be fully circular at the same time as they become climate-neutral, however, transitioning to the CE has become a part of their strategy. Nonetheless, governments that don’t aim to become completely circular soon, do still recognize that they should take significant steps in closing the major circularity gap.

It is expected that governments (both national and local) will play a leading role in the societal transitions to a CE. Therefore, it is important that governments properly measure and monitor the transition, to effectively support the businesses and citizens they represent. A good first step would be to understand the material flows in and out of their economy at the national level. From here, it is crucial to, pick the low-hanging fruits so the transition can start swiftly and have a strong impact on emissions and improving ecologies, and then, assessments can be made on how to tackle the more difficult issues of the transition. It will be important to iterate the assessment process to find the optimum interventions that will move society further towards circularity. If enough cities are willing to pledge maximum circularity by 2050, as Rotterdam is doing, this can get a snowball rolling, and best practices can be shared to eventually facilitate all cities to reach the target of resource neutrality.

As discussed in Chap. 1, the global economy is only 8.6% circular as of 2020 [40]. We are heavily dependent on virgin resources and have a relatively low capacity to process end-of-life products for a return to reuse in the economy. To support a transition to a CE we need to better measure our efforts to make this happen and for that, we need quantitative indicators. This needs to happen at the macro, meso, micro, and nano levels (Fig. 1.1). To this purpose, ISO 59020 is currently in development.

It was evident from Chap. 2 that the evaluation and reporting of ESG performance of businesses overlaps with circularity assessment at the micro-level (in the systemic hierarchy), as most of the measured indicators for environmental and social aspects are common to both. It is, therefore, important to take note of the loopholes in the ESG reporting standards and regulations for developing a robust and universally applicable circularity assessment standard. On the other hand, circularity assessment should become a part of sustainability reporting to tap into the financial opportunities for circular projects, currently available for sustainable development.

At the macro level, as shown in Chap. 3, we find that MFA, Input-Output Analysis, and LCA as popular methods of assessments, with the best results achieved when several methods are combined. Much research is especially focused at the city level, for which several initiatives have been launched. Often indicators used by circular cities relate to the (relative) amount of materials that are recycled, the $\text {CO}_2$ emissions saved, the amount of waste that is avoided by initiatives, and the number of new jobs generated. Table 3.1 presents a large overview of indicators used by cities. On a larger scale, like the nation or for the EU, indicators tend to be more focused on per capita and relative figures over absolute amounts, as shown in Table 3.2.

At the meso level, where economic sectors are discussed, we typically highlight initiatives related to EIPs, as shown in Chap. 4. With EIPs, a synergy is sought between companies in different parts of supply chains, to minimize the externalities of the industrial park as a whole. First of all, a way to identify EIPs is presented in Chap. 3. We found several assessment frameworks, such as the UNIDO requirements showcased in Table 4.1 and the National EIPs Evaluation Standard System of China that is presented in Table 4.2. The UNIDO framework is more of a checklist for best practices for EIPs while the Chinese evaluation system is more focused on measuring the performance of EIPs.

At the micro-level, we look at individual companies as shown in Chap. 5. While most studies consider products and components as part of the micro-level, we follow the ISO/TC323 explanatory note and put products and components as a separate economic hierarchy ‘nano level’ in Chap. 5. For businesses, there are distinct indicators in the areas of operations (i.e., resource efficiency, eco-design, and green projects), waste management (i.e., wastewater, emissions, solid waste, recycling, remanufacturing, and end-of-life management), and supply-chain management. This is because when companies belong to diverse economic sectors, the indicators relevant and most impactful for each of these companies differ highly—a primary reason as to why, often, companies develop their own set of indicators.

At the nano-level, individual commercial products are assessed for their environmental impacts majorly using the LCA as shown in Chap. 6. Although the LCA is not truly a circular assessment, it is vastly applied to a variety of products and is closest to a circularity assessment. The indicators measurements based on the life cycle of a particular product are categorized into standard impact categories (such as contributing to climate change, water bodies eutrophication, and toxicity caused in the biota) useful for assessing the product. However, this approach does not cover the economic dimension and the circularity at the grass-root level. Therefore, revisiting the design of existing products from the perspective of material efficiency criteria becomes critical in achieving circularity.

Much will also depend on consumers and if they are willing to change their lifestyles. If they continue in their current path of preferring new products and low prices, it is likely society will remain mostly in a recycling economy and will not adopt a more granular approach that includes reducing consumption and enhanced product reuse. Consumers also hold the power to push firms and governments to make an effort in transitioning to the CE. People must have the right awareness so they can collectively steer society in the way they deem best. This can even include an economic viewpoint where (short-term) growth is no longer a key driver in policy, but more focus might be put on sustainability instead, with a stronger focus on environmental and social dimensions.

Most indicators used for the CE at the micro or meso level focus on the production and reverse supply chain of goods and waste, with only macro indicators capturing consumption patterns. There is little detailed data available on the actual consumption and real durability of goods [41]. When products reach consumers, it cannot be assumed they are being actively used [42]. Furthermore, after initial consumption, most of the second-use transactions are within the informal economy which makes tracking of reuse difficult and challenging [22]. Also in the recycling industry, the large informal sector active in this area can make it challenging to properly measure how consumers treat their end-of-life goods [43, 44]. To gain a better idea of how circular our society is and to further the transition to a CE, it is crucial to trace products and materials through all life cycle stages, including the use phase with consumers.