How to Track Recycled Content for Circular Economy Goals and Carbon Management Impact

In today's regulatory landscape, circular economy metrics are becoming crucial for companies aiming to meet evolving standards like ESRS E5 and CSRD. Tracking recycled content is not just about sustainability marketing anymore; it is a fundamental requirement for achieving Scope 3 emissions reduction, enhancing material transparency, and demonstrating regulatory compliance.

• Increasing Importance of Circular Economy: A report by the European Environment Agency states that "a circular economy can make a major contribution to Europe’s efforts to achieve a more sustainable economic system" and highlights the growing policy interest in this area. 
• Regulatory Pressure (ESRS E5 & CSRD): The European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), including E5 on Resource use and circular economy, are mandated under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). The CSRD aims to "ensure that companies publish reliable and comparable sustainability information." 
• Impact of Material Choice on Scope 3 Emissions: According to CDP, purchased goods and services are a significant driver of Scope 3 emissions, often representing the largest category for many companies. Tracking recycled content directly addresses the embodied carbon within these goods. 

Yet, most companies struggle to track recycled content effectively. Fragmented supply chain data, static reporting methods, and lack of visibility into material composition slow down progress. This is where Carbmee steps in.

Through its Custom Properties and Carbontology framework, the Environmental Intelligence System carbmee EIS™ provides companies with the tools to seamlessly track recycled content and connect this data directly to emissions impacts, building a smarter, scalable, and audit-ready sustainability model.

Accurate tracking of recycled content requires monitoring several key metrics:

• Recycled Content Percentage by material, supplier, or product: Understand how much recycled material is incorporated into each product.
• Material Reuse Rate: Capture how effectively materials are reused within production cycles.
• Source Category: Differentiate between pre-consumer (industrial waste) and post-consumer (used by end-consumers) recycled materials.

These measurements directly feed into carbon accounting models and are vital for calculating emissions factors linked to material use.

Despite the clear importance, businesses face significant hurdles when tracking recycled content:

• Lack of Traceability in Bills of Materials (BOMs): BOMs often miss detailed material origin information, making it difficult to prove recycled content claims.
• Supplier Inconsistencies: Different suppliers provide data in different formats, or omit critical information altogether.
• Manual Lifecycle Analysis and Reporting: Many companies still rely on static lifecycle assessments, spreadsheets, and manual reporting, which are inefficient and prone to errors.

Without a centralized, automated system, ensuring traceability and audit-readiness becomes a major operational burden.

Building a circular economy strategy and demonstrating ESG leadership hinges on robust recycled content tracking. Here’s why it matters:

• Demonstrates Progress Toward Circularity Goals: Measurable recycled content data supports CSRD and ESRS disclosures and showcases your commitment to a sustainable business model.
• Enhances Product Sustainability: Higher recycled content usually correlates with lower embodied carbon, helping reduce Scope 3 emissions and improving overall product footprints.
• Positions Your Company as a Transparency Leader: Companies that can credibly report recycled content and material reuse stand out to regulators, investors, and customers looking for authenticity in sustainability claims.

Carbmee’s Custom Properties empower companies to build flexible, detailed carbon models tailored to their individual goals and business strategy. Tracking recycled content at a granular level, including the percentage and categorization of pre-consumer and post-consumer materials, allows for precise reporting and informed decisions regarding circular economy goals and carbon management. Flagging products and materials with circularity compliance attributes further supports the management and communication of an organization's commitment to sustainability standards.

For recycled content tracking, you can easily:

• Add Recycled Content % at the material, product, or supplier level.
• Create Material Reuse Categories to distinguish between types of recycled content.
• Tag Circularity Compliance Attributes to flag products and materials that meet circular economy standards.

These custom fields allow real-time integration of recycled content data into your carbon model, ensuring emissions factors reflect actual material use not outdated assumptions.

By using Custom Properties, you future-proof your sustainability tracking against new regulatory requirements, customer audits, and internal ESG goals.

Explore how Carbmee Custom Properties work

Traditional carbon management models often operate in silos, disconnected from operational realities like ERP data integration or real-time BOM changes. This leads to assumptions, batch updates, and inaccuracies.

Carbontology solves this by creating a connected data model that links:

• Material properties (like recycled content %)
• Emissions factors           
• Lifecycle stages
• Regulatory requirements
  
  When a material’s recycled content percentage changes (for example, due to a supplier update), the emissions model updates automatically with no manual intervention needed.

This is essential for:

• Dynamic Scope 3 accounting
• Audit-readiness for CSRD and ESRS compliance
• Supplier-specific carbon modeling
• Real-time reporting for sustainability teams

With Carbontology, your recycled content tracking becomes scalable, precise, and embedded within your operational workflows.

Getting started with Carbmee’s recycled content tracking capabilities is straightforward:

1. Integrate Your BOM and ERP Systems:Carbmee ingests BOM data to ensure material-level tracking.
2. Define Custom Properties: Set up fields like Recycled Content %, Source Category, and Material Reuse Rate.
3. Map Supplier Inputs: Work with your suppliers to collect verified recycled content data.
4. Link Emissions Factors: Connect material properties to accurate emissions factors for Scope 3 accounting.
5. Automate Reporting: Use dashboards and dynamic reports to fulfill CSRD, ESRS, and voluntary reporting frameworks.

Book a demo to model recycled content tracking and automate circularity reporting.

Tracking recycled content with precision is no longer optional, it’s a regulatory, operational, and strategic necessity.

By adopting Carbmee’s flexible and scalable Custom Properties approach, your company can:

• Ensure traceability of recycled materials across the entire product portfolio.
• Achieve audit-ready Scope 3 disclosures and align with ESRS and CSRD regulations.
• Reduce Scope 3 emissions and enhance product sustainability.
• Strengthen your ESG profile and win customer and investor trust.

Make recycled content tracking simple, scalable, and strategically empowering your teams to focus less on manual work and more on driving real carbon impact.

Ready to lead in circularity and carbon transparency? We are ready to help. 

Get in touch!