Just by Design, Not by Default: Why social indicators are essential for a circular economy

This research paper “Just by design, not by default: Why social indicators are essential for a circular economy” argues that achieving a socially fair transition requires deliberate measurement and governance rather than assuming social benefits will occur automatically.

The key takeaways from the study include:

1. Current Monitoring Has a Structural Bias

• While policy frameworks emphasize that circular transitions should “leave no one behind,” existing Circular Economy (CE) monitoring systems focus almost exclusively on material flows, resource productivity, and environmental metrics.
• Omitting social indicators is not merely a data gap, but a structural bias that keeps labor conditions, equity, and participation invisible in policy decisions.

2. Social Blind Spots in Existing Metrics

• Current social metrics (like employment figures) often track job creation while overlooking job losses, displacement, work quality, and health risks.
• Monitoring fails to account for global burden-shifting, where circular strategies in high-income regions (such as exporting low-quality second-hand textiles) push environmental and labor risks onto lower-income countries with weaker protections.

3. Evaluating Circularity Through Three Justice Lenses

The authors apply three core justice dimensions to highlight critical gaps in current metrics:

• Distributional Justice: Focuses on how benefits, costs, income insecurity, and risks are allocated across workers, regions, and global value chains.
• Procedural Justice: Evaluates whether informal workers, local communities, and small actors are meaningfully included in decision-making and policy design.
• Recognitional Justice: Addresses whose knowledge and contributions are valued, explicitly recognizing informal waste pickers, community initiatives, and repair networks that form the backbone of circular practice.

4. Recommendations to Advance Just Circular Monitoring

The paper proposes three core priorities for policy and indicator design:

• Better Indicator Design: Treat social metrics as core performance indicators, incorporating both quantitative metrics (e.g., job displacement rates, wage levels) and qualitative/ordinal scales (e.g., participation quality, existence of grievance mechanisms).
• Mixed-Method Monitoring: Combine standardized quantitative datasets with qualitative and participatory assessments (such as focus groups and interviews) to capture lived experiences and power dynamics.
• Governance Integration: Link social metrics directly to regulatory instruments (such as the EU Digital Product Passport and Ecodesign rules), establishing clear thresholds that trigger policy adjustments when social trade-offs occur

Read the full paper, please click here.