«Completing the Picture highlights the indispensable role that the circular economy plays in tackling the climate crisis. It aims to demonstrate how circular economy principles and strategies significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It sets out analysis on industry and the food system to illustrate how the circular economy transforms the way products are made and used, and how this transformation has the potential to reduce emissions. These insights have been drawn from two Material Economics reports – Industrial transformation 2050 (2019) and The circular economy: a powerful force for climate mitigation (2018) – and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Cities and circular economy for food (2019) report. It discusses initial findings indicating that the circular economy offers a unique potential to increase resilience to the physical effects of climate change, and aims to initiate a deeper exploration of the subject. Finally, setting clear priorities, the paper calls on governments, businesses, investors, and academia to integrate their efforts to respond to climate change with those to accelerate the transition to a circular economy».
