„Through the implementation of a CE approach, cities have experienced the need of indicators for monitoring and to report on their efforts and achievements. The Partnership on CE has identified the lack of such indicators as a bottleneck for cities in implementing a CE strategy.

Measuring the performance of cities in their shift towards a CE provides an opportunity for cities to self-assess their achievements, to identify barriers as well as opportunities and to adapt accordingly their development trajectory towards circularity. From these considerations emerges the need for a sound and realistic framework of indicators for a CE transition in cities.“ (p 5f)

A lot of needs (p 5) as well as challenges (p 6) concerning the CE indicators have been identified together with partners and stakeholders :

• Needs – a selection
• Need for a shared view on CE indicators among authorities and policy-makers.
• Conceptual underpinning of an indicator framework, which addresses appropriateness and availability of data.
• Indicators on CE may be part of a self-assessment tool but also allow for a comparison across cities in Europe.
• Clarity about definitions – on CE at the city level cities, but also on more technical issues, e.g. municipal waste (including industry waste), packaging waste, jobs in the CE sector.
• Indicators should make the best possible use of existing data (even though some cities have resources for data gathering, e.g. surveys amongst companies).
• The cost to introduce indicators should be considered – indicators should be as simple, as possible.
• Awareness-raising and the importance of mainstreaming (bringing a large group of companies and citizens into the understanding of CE) is an important aspect that may be captured by indicators.
• Inventory of cities with roadmaps and indicators would be useful and there could be follow-up meetings between them and/or a pilot project on exchange of information on setting up CE indicator systems.