Circularity and critical materials: from ambition to evidence
Independent advice grounded in materials engineering, metrics and economics.
Why Hoskins
Two sides of resource security
Criticality shows which materials put your supply at risk. Circularity is one of the strongest levers for reducing that risk.
Both start with knowing what your products are made of.
Built on the circularity metric
I co-developed the Material Circularity Indicator with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Its results now appear in over 500 verified product listings in Environmental Product Declarations across Australia and New Zealand.
Critical materials expertise
I've worked on material supply risk since 2010. I developed a compositionally aggregated method that assesses risk across a whole bill of materials, and I serve on the UK Critical Minerals Expert Committee and the advisory board of the International Round Table on Materials Criticality.
Aligned with standards
I'm a contributing author of ISO 59020:2024 and a national expert to ISO/TC 323, Circular economy.
What I do
For manufacturers making product claims, building and fitout teams, procurement and supply-chain leads, and government and industry bodies who need circularity and supply-risk evidence that stands up.
Advisory. Expert counsel on call: opinions on circularity claims and regulations, peer review, executive advice and leadership workshops.
Projects. Fixed scope, defensible results: circularity strategy, KPIs, ISO 59000 implementation, green building ratings, material supply risk, recycled content and MCI assessments.
Training. Build in-house capability: masterclasses, corporate programmes, industry workshops and keynotes.
Have a claim to test, a supply risk to understand or a strategy to build?
Talk to me about advisory, projects or training. Get in touch or read more about me.
Recent work
“James Goddin was of great help and support to the Metal Packaging Europe association to understand the concept of circularity applied to packaging via the MCI – Material Circularity Indicator.”
— Romeo Pavanello, Sustainability Manager, Metal Packaging Europe
Metal packaging, Europe
Helped Europe’s metal packaging association apply the Material Circularity Indicator to packaging, with a tailored workshop and webinar for members and a review of the association’s MCI calculations.
Independent review for openLCA
Reviewed GreenDelta’s openLCA Circularity Package v3.1 for its alignment with ISO 59020:2024 and the Material Circularity Indicator, supporting circularity calculations within life cycle models (2026). See the announcement.
Circular procurement for councils
Developed a Circular Procurement Toolkit for Hunter Joint Organisation’s member councils: a step-by-step procurement pathway, checklists, supplier forms and model contract clauses, guidance on procuring low-carbon concrete, and a custom Material Circularity Indicator tool (2025–26). Download the toolkit here.
Circular procurement in property
Developed the Better Buildings Partnership’s circular procurement best practice guideline, helping Australian property owners, managers and tenants embed circularity into procurement (2024–25). Read the guide here.
National evidence for New Zealand
Led a study for MBIE mapping New Zealand’s material flows, identifying circular interventions that could cut emissions by up to 1.9 Mt CO2e a year alongside job and supply-chain resilience benefits. Read the report here.
Material risk in aerospace
Developed tools with Rolls-Royce for early-stage assessment of material supply risk in aerospace design, then coordinated PLEIADES, a €2.5M Clean Sky 2 project with Rolls-Royce and Sphera bringing eco-design and life cycle tools into component design. Watch the summary video.
openLCA, Hunter JO, Better Buildings Partnership and MBIE projects delivered at thinkstep-anz.
Tools you can use now
Ocean Plastics
How ocean plastic accumulates. Adjust production, leakage and clean-up to see why plastic persists, and why only closing the leakage pathway changes the outcome.
Critical Minerals
Mineral supply risk. Production concentration and governance risk for 78 mined resources, 1996 to 2024, compared with nine governments' critical-minerals lists.
Coming soon
MCI Calculator
A browser-based Material Circularity Indicator calculator by subscription. Meanwhile, the free, basic Excel MCI calculator remains available to download here.
MCI Registry
Published MCI results. Verified MCI results from Australasian EPDs, plus self-declared values, plotted point by point and searchable by producer, product and region.
Critical Materials
Material supply risk. Supply risks applied to alloys, batteries and other real materials. How could a change in supply impact the availability of the materials you rely on?
