Traceability, circularity and

sustainability
- challenges and opportunities from
different sectors

Susanna Horn
Centre for Sustainable Consumption and Production
Finnish Environment Institute
ToS on Environmental, Social and Governance Traceability of Sustainable Value Chains
in the Circular Economy (Second Session), 6.10.2022, Geneva
Contents

1 Traceability – what can be achieved by it? Views of Finnish plastics sector

2 Reporting and traceability in the metals sector

3 Textile sector case study

4 Resulting recommendations
1. Traceability – what can be achieved by it?
Recent views from the Finnish plastics value chain actors
Calculating environmental footprint
(LCA)
•For optimizing environmental impacts, e.g.,
determining best solutions, hotspots
•Validation of sustainability (LCA) claims
Identifying functional paths of the
materials
•Isolating food contact materials from others;
•To ensure that materials are used in highest
possible refinement level
Understanding material flows on a
national-/EU-/global scale
•To increase understanding about how
materials move and in what volumes
Clic Innovation, Circular Economy Working Group (September 2022)
Recognizing material contents
•For determining appropriate recycling
•For identifying hazardous substances
•For determining recycled content
Identifying geographical paths of the
materials Tracing materials,
•For identifying original source, number of life
cycles
tracing impacts,
Reporting
•Reporting for regulators, external stakeholders
•Getting approval for the material
•Producing information for consumers
2. Reporting and traceability in the metal sector
From reporting… to product level traceability… to value chain traceability

Complexities
• Specific materials and flows particularly
E.g. manufacturing difficult to trace: recycled materials,
Company mixtures, complex products
• Global metal markets
• Multitude of sustainability impacts (ore-,
Use EoL
Mine 1 Material 1 Supplier 1 Product 1
product 1 product 1 country-, technology-specific)
• Mining impacts are context-specific, but
Use EoL location of deposits are fixed
Mine 2 Material 2 Supplier 2 Product 2
product 2 product 2 • Allocation of mining impacts difficult
• Data is supersensitive
Use EoL
Mine 3 Material 3 Supplier 3 Product 3
product 3 product 3
What does traceability
Mine 4 Material 4
Supplier
Product 4
Use EoL support?
(energy) 4 product 4 product 4 • Source (e.g., conflict minerals)
Scope 2
• Design (e.g., raw materials, design-
for-recycling)
• Sustainability hotspots, simulations
Recycled • Efficient recycling
material 1
• Mitigation of risks
Scope 1 • Awareness of tradeoffs
Recycled
material 2
→ From passive reporting
to proactive use of data
Tracing also has its
(environmental) cost, so
collect only what is
needed
3. Example of Finnish textile case in CE context
The life cycle covers many stages and can be “circularized” in various ways
→ Tracing the full life cycle can help to determine which solutions to implement

(substitution of fiber
made from virgin
raw mateials) TEXTILE
RECYCLING

(substitution
of energy)

S5
S1
S2
S7
S3
VIRGIN RAW PRODUCT RETAIL &
MATERIALS 1ST USER WASTE
MANUFACTURING ONLINE RETAIL INCINERATION
Fibre, yarn production,
dyeing, knitting,
confectioning, finishing,
S4
S7 packaging (less washing)

(less washing)
PRODUCT
RENT
RECYCLED PET
SERVICE
BOTTLES
2ND USER

S1 Recover S2 Reuse S3 Rethink/ S4 Repurpose S5 Recycle S7 Reduce S7 Combination of Rs

Linear base case. Energy
recovery from product
incineration.
Product passed on to
second user.
Remanufacture
Product-as-service,
reprinting product for new
user needs.
Product manufactured from Product material recycled Product use phase Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle
discarded material with a efficiency increased by and Reduce all utilized
different function washing and tumble drying
less frequently

Horn, S.; Mölsä, K.; Sorvari, J.; Tuovila, H.; Heikkilä, P. submitted. Environmental sustainability assessment of a polyester T-shirt – Comparison of circularity strategies
 Comparison of CE solutions
0 5E-15 1E-14 1,5E-14 2E-14 2,5E-14 3E-14 3,5E-14

S1 Recover Baseline

S5 Recycle -8% Uncertainty due to limited data:

4,5E-14
S4 Repurpose -9%
4E-14
3,5E-14
S3 Remanufacture

Weighted result
-18%
3E-14
2,5E-14
S2 Reuse -18%
2E-14
1,5E-14
S6 Reduce -37%
1E-14
5E-15
S7 Combination of Rs -70%
0
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7
-80,0 % -70,0 % -60,0 % -50,0 % -40,0 % -30,0 % -20,0 % -10,0 % 0,0 %
Mean value
Global warming potential Water scarcity Eutrophication, freshwater
Eutrophication, marine Acidification Resource depletion, energy carriers
Respiratory inorganics

X-axis: weighted environmental impact indicator

 4. Resulting recommendations

1. Define “optimum” amount of traced data (what

is really required for e.g., decision-making, risk
mitigation)

2. Consider how data should be processed to

relevant information for different stakeholders
(“from data to knowledge to action”)

3. Increase analytical capabilities to assess the

concrete benefits (quantity & quality) of
individual CE solutions. The choice should be
an informed one.

Tämä kuva, tekijä Tuntematon tekijä, käyttöoikeus: CC BY-NC-ND

Background slides
Different sustainability aspects to be traced