Circularity FactsTM Program

Overview

The pursuit of the circular economy model is, in many ways, complex and uncharted territory, touching every aspect of business, from the production process to supply chain management and product disposal after use. Businesses can find it challenging to know how to clearly and meaningfully measure and communicate circularity.

UL Solutions helps bring clarity and organization to the complexity through its Circularity Facts Program. Based on the world’s first science-based standard for the circular economy, UL 3600, Measuring and Reporting Circular Economy Aspects of Products, Sites and Organizations. This program quantifies a company’s efforts related to making material flows more circular and sustainable in three dimensions: product, facility and enterprise.

UL Solutions’ Circularity Facts Program combines all sustainable activities into one measure that demonstrates a company’s complete circular economy story through a Circularity Facts report.

What does the Circularity Facts Program measure?

In an effort to fully measure impact, UL Solutions’ Circularity Facts Program evaluates multiple aspects of circularity.

• At the facility level, circularity is based on inputs and outputs of a facility, including waste diversion at the site or sites where the products included in the scope of the calculation are manufactured.
• At the product level, the Standard provides a way to calculate the circularity of technical materials that is, materials that may be recycled, reused and/or refurbished - as well as biologic materials, which are biobased materials that are compostable or digestible through anaerobic means at the end of their useful life. The Standard further breaks down and measures product level circularity in terms of content (formulation or composition) and design (such as designing for reuse or recycling).
• Company-level circularity is an average across product- (or product portfolio-) and site-level circularity scores.

The UL 3600 Standard and our innovative program evaluate a company’s initiatives that extend resource usage for as long as possible. They provide a clear way to measure and report progress toward circularity at the product, site and corporate levels. UL Solutions’ Circularity Facts Program is an excellent tool to help businesses understand and share their progress toward achieving circularity with the marketplace. By measuring multiple facets of impact, companies can easily track progress as they expand the scope of their own circularity initiatives. This makes it an ideal tool for evaluating progress over time.

Companies will receive a graphical representation of results–broken down by product, facility, and company. UL Solutions’ Circularity Facts Program quantifies a company’s efforts related to making material flows more circular and sustainable in three dimensions – product, facility, and enterprise.

Related standard

• UL 3600 Measuring and Reporting Circular Economy Aspects of Products, Sites and Organizations