Scotland’s circular economy has been quantified in hard numbers for the first time, with a new economic study placing its contribution at GBP 7.11 billion in gross value added (GVA) in 2021. The valuation represents 4.7 per cent of Scotland’s total GVA, or 3.9 per cent of GDP when including offshore oil and gas extraction. Employment linked to circular activity stood at 81,447, accounting for 4.4 per cent of total Scottish jobs.
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The figures, published by Zero Waste Scotland and produced by Eunomia Research & Consulting with University College London, establish a baseline for measuring circularity’s role in Scotland’s economy. They also highlight the scale of opportunity: circular activity already outpaces EU averages, but significant data limitations mean the true footprint may be larger than current estimates show.
Quantifying circularity
The analysis followed the European Circular Economy Monitoring Framework (ECEMF), developed by Eurostat as the EU-wide standard for tracking circular activity. The framework identifies 127 circular activities across the “9Rs” hierarchy — reuse, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, recycle, recover and related functions — and maps them to NACE and CPA classifications for integration into economic statistics.
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