Which role for Life Cycle Thinking in the definition of meaningful indicators for the circular economy?

There is an urgent need to provide companies with guidance on how to measure the performance of their products and activities in the implementation of circular economy (CE) strategies. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the identification of the most suited metrics for CE at the micro level. We discuss the role of Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) in the development of meaningful circularity indicators at the product level taking into account the absolute perspective on CE. Our analysis is limited to the environmental aspect of sustainability with a focus on the climate change impact. We use a case study of an aluminium can to illustrate the challenges arising from the use of some of the available metrics either directly or indirectly based on LCT, i.e. the Material Circularity Indicator and the Materials Reutilization Score for the product and the Sectorial Decarbonization Approach at the corporate level.