Weighting of circularity dimensions

Methods to determine the environmental consequences of circular strategies may be a prerequisite for the circular economy. However, the weighting factors of the criteria groups in the international L.1023 circularity scoring standard need to be determined beforehand. No comprehensive analysis of the connection between carbon footprint based life cycle assessment (LCA) results – of the product to be evaluated and redesigned – and these weighting factors has been published. Here a method, based on lifetime reduction and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), for establishing weighting factors in the L.1023 standard for circularity scoring of electronic goods (EEE), is presented. The scope of the present investigation is the life cycle of a generic EEE evaluated with the L.1023 standard, AHP and carbon emissions. Statistical hypothesis testing at the single circularity score level shows that for the EEE example, the chance of mistakenly favoring the redesigned alternative over the status quo when they are in reality indistinguishable can be as low as 0.6%.