‘Small stories of closing loops’: social circularity and the everyday circular economy

Abstract

There is now no doubt that current global production-consumption-disposal systems are threatening the fundamental conditions of existence on this planet. In response, the pressing need for total system transformation has gained civic and political traction, feeding into longstanding debates and interventions that are aimed at recalibrating prevailing economic and social practices. One such debate and intervention is that of the circular economy (CE). Here, advocates argue that current linear resource and energy use systems must be reconfigured into loops of re-use, repair, refurbishment, and recycling, displacing primary production and lessening greenhouse gas emissions in the process. This agenda has potentially profound implications for aspects of daily social practices. Yet, to date, little attention has been paid (politically and in research) to how the CE does and will interact with everyday habits, norms, and meanings. In response, this paper explores some of the conceptual assumptions underlying the CE 'consumer'. It argues that mainstream CE debates are underscored by an impoverished view of our relationships with complex material cultures, which in turn is creating barriers to transformation. Drawing on empirical research into responses to the CE in the UK and the Netherlands, this paper contrasts the challenges of inciting consumers to take up new, resource-efficient business models in contexts of hyper-consumerism, with a more hopeful 'small story' of overt, small-scale circular spaces, that nevertheless embed the CE and its underlying impetuses more clearly into the everyday.

Advancing the Circular Economy in Public Sector Organisations: Employees’ Perspectives on Practices

“…Within the set of CE practices, both technical-oriented practices aimed to achieve traditional resource efficiency and human-centred practices targeted for consumption reduction, sharing and dematerialisation activities have been identified. This range of CE practices highlights that the interviewees and the public administration seem to be aware of the transformative potential of introducing CE practices addressing consumption behaviours in day-to-day operations alongside the traditional technical resource efficiency-oriented practices which has been stressed by previous literature [22,46]. These findings exhibit that PSOs are different from manufacturing, producer-oriented organisations in that most of the CE practices identified are linked to a 'consumeroriented' perspective as opposed to a 'producer' perspective [14] as the next subsections will demonstrate.…”

“…Considering the above-mentioned lack of research on the CE principles and practices adapted to the public sector at the organisational level, the main aim of this research is to identify what public sector employees perceive as suitable CE practices for central PSOs. CE practices can be identified by studying the specific social and material configurations [22] of a central public administration. Therefore, a case study approach has been chosen in which public sector employees involved in sustainability-related work at central level in Portugal have been interviewed, and governmental documents have been analysed.…”

Towards a territorial definition of a circular economy: exploring the role of territorial factors in closed-loop systems

“…Even though the theoretical and practical elements underpinning the circular economy and its materialization are rooted on long-standing concepts and epistemic, the literature agrees on the fact that the basic assumptions concerning the economic and social structures, cultures, norms and everyday habits surrounding the development of closed-loop systems still remain largely unexplored (Hobson 2019;Korhonen, Honkasalo, and Seppälä 2018;Marin and Meulder 2018;Merli, Preziosi, and Acampora 2018). An aspect that remains under-researched is the spatial and territorial dimension of closed-loop systems, in particular the relational logic of geographical norms and scales as factors for adequate management of resources (Barles 2009).…”

Addressing the Social Aspects of Circular Economy: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Besides, many researchers highlight that there is no evidence the contribution of CE to sustainability, particularly to social wellbeing. [4] So far, insufficient consideration is given to how CE will interact with normality (habits, norms), and meanings in circularity approaches [14].…”