Search for: All records

Amid the growth of circular economy research, policy, and practice, there are increasingly loud calls for a unified and singular definition of circularity. This unity is needed, proponents argue, to enable swift action in the face of climate and environmental crises. Our work interrogates the ideal of convergence around the circular economy. We ask whether circularity must be singular and uniform in order to be effective. Based on convergence science research and social theory rooted in ideas of divergence, our paper draws on observations of a convergence science workshop, focus groups, interviews, and questionnaires with US-based circular economy professionals to explore shared and divergent understandings and practices of circularity. We find that even among a relatively homogeneous group of research participants (in terms of race, class, and education), there is significant divergence in terms of both practices and perceptions of circular economy principles. We focus in this paper on how research participants understand innovation in the circular economy as just one potential illustration of divergent circularity. Our research contributes to an understanding of circular economy knowledge politics, illuminating how circularity is contested even among those who advocate most strongly for its implementation. We ultimately find opportunity and promise precisely in the spaces of contestation, and see divergence as a way to hold space for multiple ways of being and relating to economies, materials, and beings. These more inclusive pathways, we argue, may be necessary to ensure just and effective transitions to more circular economic forms. 

ircular economies are often framed as addressing a trio of problems: environmental degradation, economic stagnation, and social ills, broadly defined. Our paper centers on this last claim – that circular economies promise social benefits. There is a dearth of literature focused on the social dimensions of circular economies (Geissdoerfer, Martin, Paulo Savaget, Nancy M. P. Bocken, and Erik Jan Hultink. 2017. “The Circular Economy – A New Sustainability Paradigm?” Journal of Cleaner Production 143 (February): 757–768. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.048.), and even less attention to the meaning of social justice in the context of circular economies, let alone how it might be enacted in policy and practice. Drawing on data generated from focus groups with circular economy experts and a content analysis of US-based governmental, NGO, and business literature on circular economies, we explore whether and how justice emerges in circular economy discourse. We explore the narratives that these actors use to describe justice, and the barriers they see in achieving just and inclusive circular economies. We aim to identify the ways in which social justice is defined and discussed – or not – by the actors who seem to be most actively pushing for a circular economy (CE). Our work addresses the critical need to articulate clearly what it is we mean by social justice in relation to the CE. For if the CE is to contribute to sustainable social transformations, justice must be more than a buzzword – the CE must be just by design.