Luxembourg launches ''Circularity Database Initiative'' supported by major international industry leaders

The Circularity Dataset Initiative launched in 2018 by the Ministry of the Economy of Luxembourg aims at developing an industry standard at European level that provides a regulated framework for circular data on products throughout the whole value chain, from raw materials to finished products, from the use phase to re-usage and recycling.

The project addresses the difficulty for industry and consumers to access reliable data on the circular properties of a product. Trade secrets are hindering transparency and reporting standards are lacking, forcing manufacturers to send out different data sets in diverse formats to customers and product platforms.

The initiative’s objective is to save costs, increase value and enable circularity by working with stakeholders to develop a process and an internationally accepted dataset template, created by manufacturers when the product is produced, and travelling along the value and supply chain with the product. The data will be verified through an auditing process and shall be used by all relevant stakeholders, including product platforms or databases. The initiative does not foresee the creation of a central database.

Since the inception of the Circularity Database Initiative, more than 50 companies from 12 different European countries including some international industry leaders like IKEA, Saint-Gobain, Tarkett or ArcelorMittal as well as national companies like Astron Buildings have joined the initiative. The growing interest for the initiative convinced the Ministry of the Economy to bring the project to the next level in 2019 and to define the dataset, the underlying process and the auditing scheme in a co-creation process. After a series of webinars, a physical meeting on December 9, 2019 will now bring together all the actors of the initiative in order to finalize the theoretical proof of concepts, developed for two product categories from the areas of construction materials and fast moving consumer goods.

Inspired by Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), the dataset will take the form of a so-called Product Circularity Data Sheet (PCDS). The PCDS regroups all relevant circular information in controlled and auditable statements helping the consumer and manufacturer to make educated choices, increase the value of the product and enabling future uses in a circular economy. To manage the PCDS process and ensure traceability, new technologies like block chain or artificial intelligence will be investigated by the working group.

Future progress of the initiative can be followed on the newly established website: www.circularitydataset.lu

Preliminary results will be shared at the Clean Tech Forum Europe 2020, which will be held in Luxembourg City from 18-20 May, 2020.

Luxembourg has successfully evolved into a global hub for information and communication technologies and as a center of excellence in cybersecurity and data protection. Providing excellent connectivity infrastructure and skills, Luxembourg is also among the leaders of the European High Performance Computing project. The Circularity Dataset Initiative is yet another example of Luxembourg’s data-driven innovation strategy put into action and making Luxembourg a forerunner in data based services for the world.

Released by the Ministry of the Economy