Circulytics vs. CTI: Which Circularity Measurement Tool Actually Fits Your Company?

Once a company decides to measure circularity seriously, it runs into a genuine strategic choice: which framework to use. The two dominant tools — Circulytics, developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and Circular Transition Indicators (CTI), developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) — emerged from different needs and answer different questions. Understanding the distinction, laid out in a cross-interview between the tools' own creators published in Field Actions Science Reports, saves companies from adopting the wrong tool for their actual situation.

Why a second tool emerged at all

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation had already developed earlier tools, including the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) — but as Jarkko Havas, the Foundation's Insights and Analysis Lead, explains, MCI was "primarily a product level circularity assessment tool, designed for internal decision making on product design." It answered a specific, narrower question well, but left a gap: how do you assess circularity for an entire company, across its full operations?

That gap is what both Circulytics and CTI, developed independently but roughly concurrently, were built to close — using different methodological approaches to the same underlying problem: aggregating complex material flow data across a value chain with many interdependencies, while remaining practical enough for actual business use.

Circulytics: the holistic, company-wide lens

Circulytics measures circular transformation at the level of the entire enterprise. It's designed to give a company a comprehensive picture of how circular its overall operations, strategy, and culture actually are — not just its material flows in one facility or product line. This makes it particularly useful for companies that need to communicate an overall circularity narrative — to investors, to the board, to public stakeholders — where a single, defensible company-wide score or profile is the goal, rather than an operational punch-list.

CTI: the granular, operational lens

CTI, by contrast, is built to aggregate complex material flow data at a more granular operational level. Irene Martinetti, who manages the Circular Transition Indicators project at WBCSD, describes the explicit design goal: being holistic enough to capture the complexity of circular economy practice while remaining practical for real business use — described in the tool's own subtitle as "metrics for business, by business."

This makes CTI particularly useful for companies that need operational-level detail — identifying specifically which material flows, which facilities, or which product lines have the greatest untapped circularity opportunity, in order to prioritize action. The CTI methodology itself runs through a structured seven-step cycle (scope, select, collect, calculate, analyze, prioritize, apply) — designed to be run repeatedly, not as a one-time audit.

The corporate adoption signal behind CTI specifically

CTI's advisory group includes major corporations actually using the framework operationally: Mercedes-Benz, Holcim, LANXESS, KPMG, Aptar, and CHEP, among others. Holcim's own stated use of the tool illustrates the practical value concretely: the company has set a target of doubling recycled waste input from 50 million to 100 million tonnes by 2030 — a concrete, trackable target that CTI's indicators allow the company to measure and report against, rather than a vague sustainability commitment with no way to verify progress. CHEP describes initially welcoming the tool for a company-wide circularity KPI, but discovering "it is actually much more" — finding the material flows analysis complements other circularity measurement systems the company already used.

The honest tension both tools have had to navigate

Both interviewees acknowledge the same underlying challenge in different words: holistic tools need to aggregate complex material flow data, account for the many interdependencies of the value chain, and incorporate the inherent complexity of circular economy practice — while remaining genuinely usable for practitioners, not just academically rigorous.

This is worth internalizing before selecting either tool: neither is a simple checklist. Both require real data infrastructure and genuine organizational commitment to use meaningfully, not just to generate a report that sits in a drawer.

How to actually decide between them

The practical decision isn't about which tool is objectively better — it's about which question your organization needs answered first:

Choose a company-wide approach (Circulytics-style) if your immediate need is a defensible, comprehensive circularity narrative for external stakeholders — investors, board reporting, public commitments — where a holistic score matters more than facility-level detail.

Choose an operational approach (CTI-style) if your immediate need is identifying specific, prioritized opportunities within your material flows — where you should invest first, which facility or product line has the highest-value circularity gap, the way Holcim uses it to track a specific tonnage target.

Many mature organizations eventually use elements of both — company-wide reporting for external communication, operational-level indicators for internal prioritization — but starting with the wrong one for your current stage wastes both time and credibility with stakeholders who can tell the difference.

How Sustek.co helps you choose and implement the right approach

Sustainability Pulse — Diagnose which measurement approach you actually need (Annual, from $2,500/year)

Before committing to any specific circularity framework, this tier establishes what your organization actually needs to measure first — and at what level of granularity, avoiding the mismatch of adopting a company-wide tool when you need operational prioritization, or vice versa.

Circular Economy Potential Audit · ESG Maturity Assessment · Cloud ESG Data Pipeline

Sustainability Navigator — Build the data infrastructure either tool requires (Semi-annual, from $4,500/engagement)

Both Circulytics and CTI require genuine data infrastructure to use meaningfully — this tier builds that foundation aligned to whichever framework fits your stage, with concrete targets like Holcim's tonnage goal built in from the start.

Circular Business Model Redesign · 4IR Technology Roadmap · Stakeholder Network Data App

Book your free discovery call → sustek.co

Frequently asked questions

Can a company use both Circulytics and CTI at the same time? Yes, and companies like CHEP describe discovering this value organically — using company-wide tools like Circulytics for external reporting and narrative, while using more granular tools like CTI internally to prioritize specific operational improvements the way Holcim tracks its recycling tonnage target.

Which tool is better for a company just starting its circularity measurement journey? Neither tool is inherently better for beginners — the right starting point depends on whether your immediate driver is external communication (favoring a holistic approach like Circulytics) or internal prioritization of where to act first (favoring a granular, operational approach like CTI's seven-step cycle).

Do these tools require expensive software to implement? Both frameworks are methodologies rather than proprietary software products, though implementing them meaningfully at scale — as Mercedes-Benz, LANXESS, and Aptar do as CTI advisory members — typically requires data infrastructure investment that scales with the size and complexity of your operations, not the tool itself.

Sources: Martinetti, I. (WBCSD) & Havas, J. (Ellen MacArthur Foundation), "Measuring Circularity at the Corporate Level," Field Actions Science Reports, Special Issue 23 (2021); World Business Council for Sustainable Development, "Circular Transition Indicators v4.0" (2021); Sustek.co Sustainability Transformation Tiers (sustek.co/services).