RECYCLING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND INNOVATION (REMI)
Working paper | v1.0

The REMI Protocol

A Verified Circular Identity framework — turning circular action into portable, verifiable, standard-native proof for people, places, and small businesses.

Open Standards ISSB-Aligned Mission-Locked CIC Bradford, UK
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The Circular Economy has Standardised the Report. It hasn't Verified the Action.

Sustainability disclosure has converged on a single global baseline. What it still lacks is a trusted, affordable way to verify the action beneath the report, especially the circular action taken by the individuals, communities, and small businesses the enterprise frameworks cannot reach.

The REMI Protocol proposes that missing layer: an independent, mission-locked verification of ground-level circular action, built on open standards and reaching the long tail where real primary data originates.

One idea, three products. A single circular action is verified once and expressed three ways: as a personal Impact Ledger, a place-based Verified Local Circularity Certificate, and an audit-grade Scope 3 / VSME data point — the same verified truth at three levels of aggregation.

What's inside the Paper

  • The trust crisis in the circular economy, and why existing product-passport approaches fall short.
  • The Verified Circular Identity framework: the atom, the Trust Ladder, and the design principles.
  • A concrete methodology — how an action becomes a verified credential, with the evidence standard at each tier.
  • Prior art, and how REMI differs from the EU DPP, the UN Transparency Protocol, and carbon MRV.
  • Why governance — a mission-locked CIC is the differentiator, not the technology.
  • The open questions we're testing, stated plainly, and how the paper scales globally.
This is a working paper describing a framework under development. REMI is at a pre-operational stage; the products described are proposed designs, not live services. We publish it in the open, and welcome challenge to the reasoning.

Read the full paper

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Cite this paper. REMI CIC (2026). The REMI Protocol: A Verified Circular Identity Framework (Working paper). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22068808

References & sources

  1. International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information; IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures. IFRS Foundation, 2023. ifrs.org
  2. European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment. Green Claims (2020 study: 53% of environmental claims vague, misleading or unfounded; 40% unsubstantiated; ~230 eco-labels). environment.ec.europa.eu
  3. European Commission. Proposal for a Directive on substantiation and communication of explicit environmental claims (Green Claims Directive), COM(2023) 166. EUR-Lex CELEX:52023PC0166.
  4. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Green Claims Code; and Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. gov.uk
  5. EFRAG. Voluntary sustainability reporting standard for non-listed SMEs (VSME), 2024. efrag.org
  6. Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard. ghgprotocol.org
  7. W3C. Verifiable Credentials Data Model. w3.org/TR/vc-data-model
  8. W3C. Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) Core. w3.org/TR/did-core
  9. California Air Resources Board. SB 253 (Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act) and SB 261. arb.ca.gov
  10. UNECE. UN Transparency Protocol (UNTP). unece.org