Circular impact compass: A monitoring and decision-support tool for evaluating community-based circular economy program

Community-based sustainability programs increasingly adopt circular economy principles, yet their monitoring systems often remain linear: they report activity counts or diversion totals without showing how resources move across actors and how those movements translate into regenerative environmental outcomes. This paper presents the Circular Impact Compass (CIC), a compact monitoring and decision-support tool designed for routine use by program teams. Using a design-based research approach, the CIC was iteratively developed through (i) analysis of existing program records and reporting forms, (ii) field observations of material handling and decision points, and (iii) co-design discussions with program stakeholders. The CIC combines an actor-to-actor Circular Flow Map with a four-dimension scorecard that operationalizes circularity as environmental regeneration, resource utilization, socio-economic circulation, and community well-being. The Flow Map makes resource routing explicit, including quality constraints and alternative pathways (e.g., reuse, recycling, and energy recovery), so that leakage points can be located and discussed. An illustrative application in an industrial-community partnership shows how the CIC supports shared interpretation of circular progress and prioritization of adaptive actions. As a scope-oriented proceedings contribution, this paper clarifies CIC constructs, boundaries, and indicator options to support replication and future validation studies.