Accelerating impact through co-design and measurement

Hi everyone! 

Here at Circularity, my role as an Impact and Insights Analyst is to help measure our impact and develop insights to help clients improve their impact across their products’ lifecycle and supply chain. The power of this collective impact can be seen in Circularity’s key impact measures from 2020 to 2022. Some of my favourites include 19,723 people whose human potential and capability we activated through our various channels and programs such as XLabs. This resulted in co-designing 80 circular solutions with partners from 2020 to 2022. Through these circular solutions there is the potential to keep 45,574 tonnes of materials in flow and to increase our clients circular material flows by 28.5%. Considering the world is less than 10% circular, the result of these solutions would put Aotearoa well ahead of the rest of the world in economic, social and environmental indicators and build our resilience as a nation, unlocking new forms of income across all levels of society. 

Demonstrating positive impact has become extremely important because more businesses are expected to showcase the amount of value they generate aside from economic profit. Impact is becoming increasingly noticed by customers and investors, and new policy is mandating companies to report on the risk climate change will have on their business and also the impact their business is having on climate change. 

In 2022, the team at Circularity started a key project alongside Silver Fern Farms. In a nutshell, this project involves measuring and co-designing systems that reduce PPE waste and keep materials in flow across 14 of their sites nationwide. By designing circular systems, Silver Fern Farms have the potential to significantly reduce the carbon emissions emitted to make these single-use materials and transport them to site. Through this analysis of both the baseline circularity as well as the potential, we are able to build a shared understanding of how to reduce costs associated with single-use and the opportunities to unlock new value by making the shift to circular systems. This is something I am deeply passionate about; framing waste as an opportunity rather than a problem through circular design. 

Circularity would not be able to report these impact measures without the partners and businesses we have worked with over the past few years. It is their appetite to create change across their business that keeps us motivated to keep improving our impact and do business better each new year. 

Our mission in 2023 is to measure the baseline circularity for at least 50 businesses in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We believe this will be a tipping point to create, at the C-Suite level, an understanding of the actual recovery rate of resources, the scale of single-use materials (not just for plastic) and the opportunities for businesses to build their resilience and unlock new value by making the shift to co-designed circular solutions. 

If you, like us, are motivated to improve your businesses positive impact and want to unlock more ways to better report and signal this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with myself and CEO & founder Louise Nash.

Benji Lines