Organisation involved
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Granta Design are the brains behind it but it was co-funded by the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation launched in 2010 to accelerate the transition towards the circular economy. The Foundation believes that a circular economy provides a coherent framework for systems level redesign and, as such, offers an opportunity to harness innovation and creativity to enable a positive, regenerative economy.

Granta Design is a leader in materials information technology – software, information resources, and services to advance materials education, and to enable better, greener, safer products.

How does it work?

The Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) gives a value between 0 and 1 where higher values indicate a higher circularity. The following inputs are used to calculate the MCI:
1. How much input is coming from virgin and recycled materials and reused components?
2. How long and intensely is the product used compared to an industry average product of similar type? 
3. How much material goes into landfill (or energy recovery), how much is collected for recycling, which components are collected for reuse?
4. How efficient are the recycling processes used to produce recycled input and to recycle material after use?

Uses can either import, build and edit bills of materials for products or designs through a web app or they can work within a CAD system. In either case, users can run reports that analyse bills of materials in order to assess prod