Humanity is transgressing planetary boundaries at an accelerating pace. Resource extractionand processing are among the main drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation,and water stress. The International Resource Panel estimates that global resource useis increasing by over 2% annually and could rise by nearly 60% between 2020 and 2060 if nocorrective action is taken. High-income countries use six times more materials per capita, andcause ten times more climate impacts per capita, than low-income countries.

Staying within ecological limits requires not only greater efficiency but also absolutereductions in material use and consumption, supported by systemic change.

The circular economy (CE) is widely promoted as a pathway to address our unsustainableresource use and reduce pressures on natural systems. In the recently published ISO standardon CE it is also stated that CE should aim to keep the inflow of virgin resources as low as possibleand flows of resources as closed as possible. In the implementation of CE, there is emphasison reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling, and these circular strategies are increasinglyembedded in European policy.

Yet CE strategies are not currently linked to absolute, binding targets for sustainableresource use.

Unlike climate policy, the CE lacks clear and measurable targets determining the scale andspeed of the needed resource use reduction, which in turn creates risks of rebound effectsand fragmented implementation of policies, and ultimately missing the full potential of CE tocontribute to sustainability goals.

This report provides a concise overview of the literature and policy landscape on linking planetaryboundaries to resource use targets for the CE. It reviews EU policy developments, emerginginternational proposals, and the implications for circular business models.Key insights include:

• Current gaps in CE policy: European Union (EU) policy frameworks (Green Deal, CE ActionPlan, 8th Environmental Action Programme) stress resource efficiency but stop short ofsetting binding targets. Existing targets are largely aspirational, efficiency focused, relativeto GDP, or limited to waste and recycling.

• Business relevance: Targets provide long-term certainty and drive innovation, as shownin climate policy. Circular business models often request resource targets, seeing them asenablers for scaling solutions. However, allocation of resource space, linked to planetaryboundaries, at the company level remains unresolved.

• Indicators and monitoring: Dozens of CE indicators exist (e.g., Circularity Gap, SystemsChange Lab), yet most measure relative circularity rather than providing alignment withecological ceilings. There are also data gaps, and more data will be needed to enable theuse of some indicators.

• Proposals in literature and practice: Scholars and NGOs call for absolute caps, such asreducing EU material footprint to 5 tonnes per capita by 2050. National governments (e.g.,Netherlands, France, Finland) have adopted reduction targets, but few are binding in nature.

• Planetary boundaries and SDGs: The planetary boundaries provide science-based thresholds,highlighting the need for absolute limits to resource use. However, translating globalboundaries into sectoral, national, and corporate targets remains methodologically challenging.Similarly, the SDGs currently lack operational thresholds. Integrating resource usetargets into the post-2030 SDG framework could strengthen global coherence, especially inrelation to justice and equitable resource distribution.

Recommendations:

1. Integrate planetary boundaries into CE monitoring frameworks, ensuring indicatorsreflect absolute ecological limits.

2. Adopt binding EU resource use targets, analogous to climate targets, to providedirectionality and policy coherence.

3. Ensure policy coherence by systematically linking CE, climate, biodiversity, andindustrial policy, avoiding silo approaches and ensuring consistency across targets.

4. Support business implementation through harmonised standards (e.g., the ISO59004 series), consistent reporting requirements, and procurement-driven marketcreation.

5. Develop methodologies for downscaling planetary boundaries to national, sectoral,and corporate levels, building on work by the Science Based Targets Network andrelated research.6. Integrate resource use targets explicitly into the SDG framework post-2030, withglobal targets for material footprint reduction.

7. Incorporate sufficiency, fairness, and resilience into target-setting, ensuringhigh-income countries strive for reduced excess consumption while enabling resourceaccess for those in need.The experience of climate policy demonstrates that setting ambitious, binding targets is apowerful lever for transformative change.

Resource use targets, if grounded in planetary boundaries and linked to CE strategies,can guide the

The circular economy is needed to resolve the world’s most pressing issues. But current legislation impact is insufficient. Despite a decade of EU policy on circular economy, Europe’s material footprint has not decreased. The problem is not ambition but where in the value chain the policy pressure is applied. This report argues the missing link is upstream, at the point where materials enter the economy.

The CircularPSP project is developing an AI-powered Public Service Platform (PSP) to support municipalities in their transition to a circular economy (CE). Municipalities, which are responsible for significant resource consumption, face systemic barriers to adopting CE practices. Eight municipalities identified four main challenge areas: access to information, operations, organisation and change. A joint pre-commercial procurement (PCP) was initiated to stimulate the development of CE-solutions. These solutions integrate large language models (LLMs) trained on a curated CE Taxonomy with multilingual and contextual support. The core objective is to provide local government staff - regardless of their level of expertise - with useful workflows to enable day-to-day implementation of CE strategies, complemented by critical functionality for decision makers, CE experts and procurement officers. Testing will include real-world deployment across 20 local government organisations from 2025, with evaluation focused on user satisfaction and ability to achieve circular impact. The approach aims to produce scalable, transferable tools to support CE adoption in diverse local contexts across the EU.

Hazardous chemicals in textiles represent a serious health issue. This is mainly due to missing data on the used chemicals and/or on their hazard, which prevents proper chemical risk assessment. Although identifying and filling these data gaps is crucial, the myriad chemicals used for textile production and multiple data sources make it extremely difficult to manually collect and process all the data. Here, we propose a machine learning-based approach to tackle this issue. First, we identify the relevant sources and data that can be analyzed with machine learning. Then, we propose knowledge graphs as a tool to organize and analyze the data. We finally provide specific examples and detail the expected outcomes of our approach.

Existing research highlights a gap between consumers’ stated preferences for circular products and their actual purchasing decisions. While much existing consumer-oriented research aims implicitly or explicitly to transform consumers’ attitudes and beliefs, this paper adopts a social practice framework in which consumer attitudes and beliefs play a relatively small role explaining behavior like purchasing decisions. The study focuses specifically on the practice of shopping for jeans, taking advantage of focus groups with adults in the United Kingdom to elicit detailed explanations of their preferences for new, recycled, or used jeans. Whereas much existing research on consumer preferences for circular or non-circular clothing assumes a direct or near-direct causal connection between preferences and behavior, we find that shopping for these different categories of jeans involves distinct social practices composed of variable meanings, materials, and competencies that are accessible to some individuals and inaccessible to others. Consequently, one avenue to increasing the relative frequency of jeans reuse becomes a matter of improving consumers’ access to the practice of shopping for used jeans rather than attempting to transform their attitudes or beliefs. 

Remote work technologies offer unprecedented flexibility to modernise official meat inspection (MI). Remote meat inspections, alongside on-site controls have a potential to make MI more sustainable when it comes to working conditions, logistic control hurdles and travel-related emissions. Nevertheless, preferences of meat control staff for features and technological set up of remote MI remain unknown. The paper investigates preferences of official Swedish MI staff for different features of remote MI. The study utilises a quantitative method, namely best-worst scaling to compare the relative importance of six aspects of remote inspections: camera location and settings, connectivity, availability of personnel at abattoirs, communication and language, security and fraud prevention, and ability to relay olfaction and haptics. The survey, administered in September–October 2023 was answered by 54.7% of the Swedish meat control staff employed by the Swedish Food Agency. The results show that respondents rate security and fraud prevention (Security) as the most important aspect for remote MI followed by connectivity and camera placement (Camera). Communication and language (Communication) and ability to relay olfaction and haptics (Senses) are considered the least important aspects. The latter findings can be explained by the fact that Official Veterinarians, which represent the majority of respondents (49%), do not routinely communicate directly with slaughter personnel who are often seasonal workers coming from outside Sweden. Moreover, olfaction and haptics could be considered naturally impractical with remote technologies. The study also finds that respondents from different administrative units and job titles have different preferences for the features of remote MI. Respondents from the headquarter generally have higher preferences for connectivity than respondents from other units. Additionally, respondents with more hands-on experience in MI, such as Official Veterinarians, tend to rate security issues higher than respondents with leading or support roles. Overall, it seems possible to meet the control staff expectations and preferences regarding the prerequisites of remote MI by legal and technical adaptations needed for this type of control flexibility. © 2024 The Authors

I Sverige finns det ungefär 2,5 miljoner ljuspunkter på statliga vägar och kommunala gator. Den huvudsakliga funktionen är att förbättra synförhållandena i trafiken, men den syftar även till att öka komfort, motverka brottslighet, samt skapa trivsel. I den här förstudien har RISE, tillsammans med 8 aktörer från gatubelysningssektorn, utforskat hur värdekedjan kan leverera de värden som offentlig belysning bidrar till med färre resurser och mindre negativ påverkan på människa och miljö än vad som görs i dag. Förstudien har utvärderat cirkularitet utifrån tre dimensioner i) att använda armaturer och dess komponenter länge, ii) att använda gatubelysningens resurser ändamålsenligt, och iii) att återcirkulera uttjänt material och att använda återcirkulerat material. En huvudsaklig slutsats är att begreppet cirkulär förmodligen är för brett för att användas i sin helhet, och att begreppet med fördel bör brytas ner till mindre beståndsdelar, för att enklare ta steg åt rätt riktning. Det underlättar för offentlig upphandling att ställa krav för förbättrad cirkularitet genom att bryta ner begreppet till mindre mål och strategier för att minska resursflödet, främst av jungfruligt material men även totalt. Detta för att det inte är tydligt i dag vad sektorn bör fokusera på. Utöver cirkulära krav på armaturerna har offentliga aktörer en viktig roll i gatubelysningens resursanvändning och påverkan på människor och biologisk mångfald genom deras beslut om var och hur mycket belysning som ska finnas, hur ofta och hur starkt den ska lysa. Två identifierade utmaningar är i) att integrerade komponenter i LED-armaturer försvårar reparation och möjlighet till återbruk, och ii) att det är svårt att sia vilka förändringar som kan komma att ske på 25 år. På ett kvarts århundrade finns mycket tid för teknologisk utveckling, ändrade krav på armaturer, eller ny lagstiftning som begränsar möjligheten att använda armaturer baserade på dagens design. På aggregerad nivå finns den största klimatbesparingspotentialen att hämta från att byta ut de kvarstående armaturerna med gammal teknik till energieffektiv LED. Detta bör kompletteras med nattsänkning och närvarostyrd belysning där det är möjligt. Andra viktiga faktorer är att försöka minska behovet av jungfruligt material, både genom att minska antalet armaturer som behövs för att möta det behov som finns, och att använda återvunnet material i högre grad. Det finns flera lagar som är viktiga för värdekedjans aktörer att följa och ta vara på, särskilt den förslagna Ekodesignförordningen och det antagna hållbarhetsrapporteringsdirektivet Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Förstudien har slutligen identifierat följande forskningsbehov för att öka förutsättningarna att minska gatubelysningens resursbehov: • Kartlägga vilka av de gamla armaturerna som kan nedmonteras • Kartlägga var närvarostyrd belysning kan ha störst effekt • Genomföra studie för att skapa förståelse för slitage och livslängd av armaturhus och komponenter • Genomföra studie för hur modulära armaturer bör designas så att nyttorna överväger nackdelarna • Utvärdera möjliga format för funktionsupphandling

The purpose of this data brief is to compile existing data on the size, contribution, and distribution of the Swedish Blue Economy within the national economy, addressing internal knowledge gaps and informing future work of the Living Labs in C2B2.

Remote meat inspection is currently not permitted under the European Union food control legislation. However, the environmental impact of travelling to and from abattoirs and increasing shortages of qualified veterinary staff make remote controls a potential future scenario. This paper reports the results of a qualitative study conducted with a sample of nineteen official veterinarians and food business operators in Sweden. We investigated attitudes, perceived risks, and prerequisites for remote meat controls in semi-structured interviews. Results indicate both positive attitudes towards remote meat inspection, and concerns related to technical challenges, reliability and security of data transfer, and possibilities of manipulation of the remote system. Respondents also noted both negative effects, such as physical hurdles for good control, and positive impacts on animal welfare, such as shortened waiting times for slaughter. Considering the current regulatory framework, only 21% of the respondents have had any prior experience with (pilot) remote meat inspections and the additional 11% carried out remote inspections of Food Chain Information documents. Nevertheless, all participants, including the majority without any prior experience in remote inspections, assumed that remote inspections would be done via video streaming. The optimal setting for a remote meat inspection, according to our respondents, seems to be a combination of cameras at fixed locations with body cameras worn by assisting abattoir personnel. Overall, remote meat inspections are possible to introduce but not without significant legal and technical adaptations as well as definition of the conditions for this type of control flexibility.

Product-as-a-service (PaaS) circular business models are at a disadvantage in terms of bank financing compared to many linear business models. Such business models generally face significant challenges both in the case of collateral-based and business case-based credit security assessments. The challenges are due to both difficulties in assessing and realising the residual value of the collateral and due to the timeframe of the risk assessment of the business case. Furthermore, the complex services that are the source of competitive advantage for PaaS firms often disqualify customer contracts as collateral. Two of the challenges (low inventory valuation and forced depreciation losses) are traced to accounting and credit regulations. Another five challenges are traced to long-term industry practice. The empirical evidence consists of quotes and summarised data from 38 interviews and 24 survey responses with banks and product firms exploring circular economy financing.