Exploring Carbon Perception in Circular Economy Initiatives : Comparing Public Understanding and Documented Carbon Outcomes of IKEA and H&M’s R-Strategies

Sammanfattning

The study investigates the structural misalignment between objective environmental baselines, public intuition, and corporate sustainability communications within the circular economy (CE). Using a three-pillar mixed-methods approach, the study compares quantitative life-cycle assessment (LCA) data against consumer survey metrics, and qualitative corporate content analysis of industry leaders H&M and IKEA. Empirical baselines (Pillar 1) confirm that structural product reuse yields significantly higher carbon mitigation benefits than material recycling, decreasing emissions from ~0.35 to ~0.18 kg CO₂e per year of use for IKEA’s furniture models and ~2.0 to ~1.1 kg CO₂e per year of use for H&M garments. Consumer perception metrics (Pillar 2) largely align with this hierarchy by generally favoring reuse over recycling. Crucially, these findings reject the hypothesis that heavily marketed recycling initiatives cause public overestimation, suggesting that consumers may intuitively associate reuse with greater environmental effectiveness than recycling. However, corporate communication patterns (Pillar 3) were less clearly aligned with these scientific findings by relying more heavily on abstract as well as lifestyle-oriented sustainability narratives rather than communicating clear LCA metrics. These findings partly challenge assumptions related to the Green Halo Effect seeing as highly visible recycling initiatives were not consistently overestimated by consumers. As such, these findings demonstrate the need for clearer and more transparent climate-related communication which includes accessible CO₂e information. Such communication can strengthen the alignment between scientific evidence, corporate communication as well as public understanding, thereby supporting more informed assessments of CE initiatives.