What is the Material Circularity Indicator (MCI)?
The MCI is a methodology developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that measures how restorative a product's material flows are on a 0 (fully linear) to 1 (fully circular) scale. It accounts for recycled input, end-of-life recycling, product lifetime, and utility. It is widely used in corporate sustainability reporting and ESRS E5.
How does ISO 59020 relate to the MCI?
ISO 59020:2024 is the first international standard for measuring and assessing circularity performance at product and organization level. It defines a set of mandatory core indicators and complementary indicators, and is compatible with the MCI approach. Many companies report both an ISO 59020 indicator set and an MCI score.
Does ESRS E5 require an MCI score?
ESRS E5 (Resource Use and Circular Economy) requires disclosure of resource inflows, resource outflows, circular material use rate, and waste. It does not prescribe the MCI specifically, but the MCI provides a defensible quantitative score that helps populate E5-1, E5-4 and E5-5 datapoints.
What data do I need to calculate an MCI?
You need the product mass and composition, the share of virgin vs recycled/reused material input, the end-of-life fate (recycled, landfilled, incinerated, reused), and the product lifetime compared to an industry average. Formist extracts these from bill of materials, EPDs and end-of-life studies.
What is the Circular Material Use Rate?
The Circular Material Use Rate (CMU) is a macro indicator used in EU policy and ESRS E5 that measures the share of recycled materials in total material use. Formula: (recycled material used) / (total material used). It is different from MCI, which is a product-level indicator, but both can be reported together.
Can MCI results be compared across products?
MCI scores are most useful within the same product category, where assumptions about lifetime, utility and material recoverability are comparable. Direct comparison across very different products (e.g. a T-shirt vs a steel beam) requires careful contextualization. The MCI methodology emphasizes hotspot analysis over ranking.