Justice, equity, and the circular economy: introduction to the special double issue

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, the Circular Economy (CE) has emerged as an important framing for business and policy action in support of sustainable development. In that time, there has been an explosion of academic publications, policy developments, and business activities related to the CE. Given that CE has been widely praised and adopted by policy think tanks, policy makers, and business, as a way to frame sustainable development, we think it is about time scholars from a critical sustainability perspective interrogate the CE framework from all three domains of sustainable development: economic prosperity, ecological integrity, and social well-being, with a particular focus on who wins and who loses in the CE. This double special issue of Local Environment helps to fill this long-overdue oversight with 14 papers that engage the Circular Economy both conceptually and through case study analyses. The aim of this special issue is two-fold – to expose diverse perspectives on the CE to Local Environment readers and to raise the awareness of justice considerations in CE discourse for a broader audience. It addresses the large knowledge gap in the literature by bringing together the work of scholars in different fields who are examining the role of justice and equity in the circular economy.

KEYWORDS:

• Circular economy
• justice
• equity
• global south
• UN sustainable development goals
• SDG10 reduced inequality

Introduction

In the last decade, the Circular Economy (CE) has emerged as an important framing for business and policy action in support of sustainable development. In that time, there has been an explosion of academic publications, policy developments, and business activities related to the CE (Ghisellini, Cialani, and Ulgiati 2016). The Ellen MacArthur Foundation in the UK is widely credited with popularising the CE concept among business and policy audiences, beginning in the European context. However, this was preceded by China’s Circular Economy promotion law in 2006, which in turn was modelled after materials recycling policies in Japan and Germany in the late twentieth century (Mathews and Tan 2011). Today, the CE framework has been deployed in just about every geographical context in the world: from existing economic sectors and new industrial configurations to politically designated spaces such as the cities, countries, regions, and continents.

The CE builds on diverse intellectual foundations, including industrial ecology, green supply chain management, ecological economics, and cradle-to-cradle design (MacArthur 2015). The CE, as in these literatures, is based on techno-centric and eco-modernist paradigms, which seek to improve the current economic system through improved efficiency and technology-enabled growth. Conceptualisation of the CE begins with extracted resource inputs, through production and use, and ends with general notions of reuse, recycling, and end-of-life management. The CE aims to utilise resources more effectively through design, sharing, reuse, and innovation strategies at micro (e.g. products, firms, and consumers), meso (e.g. supply chains and organisational networks), and macro (e.g. cities, nations, and world) scales (Kirchherr, Reike, and Hekkert 2017). It has gained much attention in the public, private, and academic spheres, offering pathways for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of material and energy throughputs in production-consumption cycles. The emphasis for CE research has been on technological and business aspects, including examining the current circularity of resource use at local to global scales (Haas et al. 2020; Vinante et al. 2021), technical approaches to improving resource sharing and recycling (Corvellec, Stowell, and Johansson 2022), and new business models that create and capture economic value in doing so (Bocken et al. 2016; Murray, Skene, and Haynes 2017). But important critiques have been raised regarding physical and technological constraints on the CE, including the bulk of materials mobilised in the global economy are used “linearly” for food and energy consumption and cannot be easily recovered for reuse or recycling; recycled materials degrade in quality with each cycle, and as such virgin resources will still be needed to satisfy growing population and affluence, particularly in regions where infrastructure is currently inadequate to meet population needs (Cullen 2017; Corvellec, Stowell, and Johansson 2022).

CE advocates emphasise the large economic benefits that can be generated by “narrowing, slowing, and closing” material loops (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017). But, like the “green” and “sharing” economies, the CE has its roots in traditional economic growth-oriented ideology, while failing to address diverse socio-cultural needs and differentiated impacts across the world (Ghisellini, Cialani, and Ulgiati 2016; Isenhour 2016). There have been calls to analyze the social implications of the CE, including how circularity affects human development and well-being (Schröder, Lemille, and Desmond 2020), and how the CE may affect the roles for citizens and the labour force (Bauwens, Hekkert, and Kirchherr 2020; Hobson 2020; Wheeler and Glucksmann 2015), as well as tensions between grassroots circularity and corporate-centered movements (Gutberlet et al. 2017). Additionally, by focusing on technological solutions and “circular modernism”, the business sector has taken the lead with people relegated to being consumers to follow (Bauwens, Hekkert, and Kirchherr 2020). Murray and colleagues (2017, 376) have noted that the CE literature “is unclear how the concept of the circular economy will lead to greater social equality”. With a focus on materials, energy, and money, CE advocates suggest that economic opportunities will create jobs and improvements in the quality of citizens’ lives. But, the distribution of differential costs and benefits of the CE across social groups is largely ignored (Fratini, Georg, and Jorgensen 2019; Krueger, Schulz, and Gibbs 2018).

As the readers of this journal know too well, geographies will have a different relationship with the CE depending on their location within the loci of power and their relationship to supply, transformation, consumption, cycling and, ultimately, disposal of materials. An example of these relations is the CE of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Here, we might consider how the origins of a resource (e.g. cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo), commodity markets, manufacturers, or more nefarious goals like planned obsolescence of mobile phones are embedded within the CE and brings inside it, much like the Trojan horse did at Troy, the complex and potentially destructive forces of capitalism and its attendant social relations. Given that CE has been widely praised and adopted by policy think tanks, policymakers, and businesses, as a way to frame sustainable development, we think it is about time scholars from a critical sustainability perspective interrogate the CE framework from all three domains of sustainable development: economic prosperity, ecological integrity, and social well-being, with a particular focus on who wins and who loses in the CE. While social scientists often grapple with such questions, it is also relevant to the work of researchers in engineering, natural science, and business realms. Social ramifications of the CE can pose barriers to the effective implementation of such strategies and lead to undesirable outcomes, such as perpetuating environmental injustices on marginalised communities, and missing valuable opportunities through exclusion of more diverse perspectives.

Aim

This double special issue of Local Environment helps to fill this long-overdue oversight with 14 papers that engage the Circular Economy both conceptually and through case study analyses. The aim of this special issue is two-fold – to expose diverse perspectives on the CE to Local Environment readers and to raise the awareness of justice considerations in CE discourse for a broader audience. It addresses the large knowledge gap in the literature by bringing together the work of scholars in different fields who are examining the role of justice and equity in the CE. The need for such a compilation emerged out of a global open virtual forum on “An Equitable, Inclusive, and Environmentally Sound Circular Economy” in May 2020, sponsored by the Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production Knowledge Action Network (SSCP-KAN) of Future Earth, The Greening of Industry Network, International Forum on Sustainable Value Chains, SCORAI, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The editors of the double special issue led a wide call for papers through these and related networks, and sought to include a range of disciplines, theoretical and applied approaches, and geographic scopes, as well as diverse perspectives from across the world.

The collection emphasises the link between CE and sustainable development. The current economy-first model of development has instilled social and environmental burdens disproportionately across the globe, with countries of the Global South, and communities of ethnic minorities, lower income, and lower social status often bearing the highest costs and reaping the least benefits (Isenhour 2016; Mathai et al. 2021). This relates to the CE in several ways but particularly with regards to the sourcing of raw materials and generation and disposal of wastes. Exploring the social, economic, and political implications of circularity and its relation to sustainable development, particularly as it relates to the distribution of flows and the socio-ecological costs of those flows is a much-needed gap (Geissdoerfer et al. 2017). Several nascent initiatives in both the Global North and the Global South draw on local knowledge to collaboratively design strategies for circular development (Schröder et al. 2019, 2020). They point the way to ensure that circular proposals and solutions address the pluralistic needs and tensions inherent in globalised movement of resources, circular, or otherwise.

The authors focus on different aspects of justice: distributive, procedural, interactional, and CE. The environmental justice literature has long dealt with the cause and impacts of disproportionate impacts of economic activities on the lower income and marginalised communities. As CE focuses largely on materials management, it has the potential to perpetuate the distribution of harms on particular population groups. Some in the collection deal with the lack of inclusion by marginalised groups in the procedures of CE policy and planning. Power dynamics in choice-making for the CE is also overlooked, as the emphasis is often on business and institutions, and increasing profitability from better resource utilisation (Isenhour, Martiskainen, and Middlemiss 2019; Krueger, Schulz, and Gibbs 2018; Nogueira, Ashton, and Teixeira 2019). A key issue addressed in the collection relates to which actors’ voices and aspirations are present and given value in the CE discourse, particularly those of informal waste workers who are not often given a “place at the table” in designing waste management policies (Carenzo 2017). As the value of discards are increasingly drawn into the private sphere through the formalisation of waste recovery efforts, those who have long been practising circularity are too often dispossessed and disempowered (Chen and Carré 2020; Soliz Torres and Acosta 2017). In some cases this has resulted in the exclusion of those who have relied on waste for their livelihoods (Dias 2016; Schröder et al. 2019). Similarly, the role of everyday citizens is explored, both for the impact that CE policies and strategies may have on them, as well as approaches that may recognise and respect the value of their knowledge and lived experiences to design and implement CE solutions.

Part 1 – theoretical, philosophical, and policy approaches

The first instalment of our double special issue asks us to think more seriously about what justice and equity are, and what they mean in the context of more circular economic systems. We open this reflection with a contribution by Joan Martinez-Alier, a pioneer in ecological economics, who argues that a circular economy cannot be effectively realised without justice. Drawing on his long career, Martinez-Alier affirms that the industrial economy is, by its very nature, entropic. The circularity gap is widening, with less than 9% of what we use cycled back into the economy (Circle Economy 2022). Rather than focusing on socio-technical solutions to counter the nature of the system, Martinez-Alier sees more hope in resistance movements rising up in protest over unequal and unfair ecological distributional conflicts (EDCs) around the globe. His contribution highlights the important role of grassroots (resistance) movements in the strategy to leave fossil fuels underground. He argues that EDCs are “valuations contests” in which incommensurable pluralistic values emerge, making them visible to the public debate (Martinez-Alier 2021). When successfully resolved, these movements can make a substantial contribution to the decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and, consequently, to reduce the entropy of our economy, key for effective circularity.

Contemporary circular economy practice and theory are subject to entropy, as well as to vague and weak claims to justice. Paul James finds that the aspirational and hopeful rhetoric of the circular economy is hampered by implementation strategies largely restricted to the realm of technological innovation, economy, and ecology. At the same time, he argues, ample critique of this eco-modernist approach has failed to deliver viable alternatives. The route around this impasse is to bring consideration of culture and politics back into our analyses and to resist the temptation, identified by Polanyi and so many others, to see the economy as a separate sphere, operating according to its own logics and independent of human societies. His contribution urges us to take notice of socially-oriented paradigms associated with the solidarity economy and emerging notions of a “Circles of Social Life” approach. He advocates a more holistic approach to CE which means “rethinking the circle: first, broadening the meaning of ‘an economy’ … ; elaborating the consequences for ecological systems of human activity beyond the immediacy of resource-use … ; and, third, bringing in basic questions of politics and culture” (James 2022).

Brieanne Berry and colleagues take readers deeper into the special issue’s invitation to consider what justice might look like in more circular economic systems. Drawing on data generated from a content analysis of US-based CEy reports as well as focus groups with CE experts, they explore the narratives that US actors use when making claims about the realisation of justice in more circular economies. Tellingly, their review of 23 US-based CE reports containing 1181 pages of text yielded only four instances of the word “justice”. Nevertheless, they found implicit assumptions about justice, which were analyzed in relation to common justice-based frameworks. They find that discourses that do include justice generally lean towards neoliberal forms which emphasise the free pursuit of mutual self-interest, the protection of private property, and freedom of choice rather than concern about distributive, procedural, or compensatory justice. They argue that without deep consideration of justice as a multifaceted concept, the movement toward more circular economies is likely to reproduce existing inequalities rather than to solve them (Berry et al. 2021).

Providing a more specific and practical case which illustrates how concerns about equity and justice might be operationalised and embedded in circular economy practice, Gabriella Gyori focuses on circular public procurement. Based on an extensive literature review focused on the concept, she observes that a clear definition is lacking and, more importantly, most iterations do not include a focus on equity or justice. As such Gyori proposes the following consensus definition, based on her synthesis of the existing literature, “Circular Public Procurement is an approach to procurement that fosters environmental sustainability by contributing to closed energy and material loops within supply chains whilst minimising negative environmental impacts along the whole product life-cycle with the aim to promote social equity and justice in the society” (Gyori 2022, 1250). In following this definition, Gyori’s contribution emphasises the necessity of incorporating social and environmental life-cycle considerations into all procurement decisions.

Our final two contributions to the first instalment of our double special issue ask questions about who gets to participate in, or is even included in, conceptualisations and discussions about the circular economy. Wendy Wuyts and Julie Marin draw on field work in Belgium’s Flemish region to argue against generalisable and universal understandings of the circular economy focused on growth and innovation. They observe that “deterritorialised” approaches neglect local knowledge and create “nobodies” whose informal but highly circular practices are rendered invisible. Wuyts and Marin thus propose CE be amended to enable a variety of localised circular economies “adapted to the needs and resources of the territory”, and which value the tacit knowledge of everyday people (Wuyts and Marin 2022).

Similarly, Chris Hartmann, Christine Hegel, and Owusu Boampong remind us of the essential but undervalued role of informal waste workers around the world. While their labour is often invisible and they are all too often excluded from crafting CE policies, the authors note that the COVID pandemic further exacerbated their long-standing vulnerabilities. Drawing on a survey and interviews of waste pickers in nine urban areas around the world (Accra, Ghana; Ahmedabad, India; Bangkok, Thailand; Dakar, Senegal; Delhi, India; Durban, South Africa; Lima, Peru; Mexico City, Mexico; and New York City, USA), the study brings attention to the occupational health challenges faced by waste pickers during the COVID pandemic. According to the authors, this is a social justice issue that highlights an important weakness of the CE as it currently operates in these nine representative cities: waste pickers perform an essential service and yet are not designated “essential workers” and thus were unable to access support during the COVID lockdowns (Hartmann, Hegel, and Boampong 2022). They advance several recommendations to address persistent inequities in the informal recycling sector to create a more inclusive and just circular economy.

Part 2 – case studies – engaging tensions in between justice and CE

The second instalment of the special issue draws on cases developed across the world that deeply explore and engage some of the tensions between social justice and the circular economy.

One problem with the CE discourse, Nanna Rask argues, is that it has been hegemonised by influential economic and political actors, placing it within “an apolitical, ecomodernist, and technocratic framing”, which “neglects issues of power, equity, and justice” while promising “a unique capacity to combine economic growth with sustainability” (Rask 2022, 1289). With the aim of (re)politicising, problematising, and disrupting seemingly apolitical understandings within CE policy and governance frameworks, Rask challenges this narrative by employing posthumanist intersectionality framings to contribute to a “critical reading and policy analysis of how the City of Gothenburg argues for and approaches CE within their new Environment and Climate Program”. The analysis demonstrates that government efforts to implement CE does not adequately address systemic social inequalities, such as in power structures, relationships, and practices. “Sustainable transformations thus require a restructuring of societal relations; offering alternative development pathways towards new modes of practice and re-formed relations between humans, societies, the economy, and the natural world, including materials and things. ‘Technological fix’ and efficiency-oriented narratives need to be replaced by narratives that also incorporate issues of power, equity and justice” (Rask 2022, 1299). This research also showcases the use of posthumanist intersectionality perspectives to inform and enrich climate and CE policies.

Rachel Ann Rosenbaum and Joslin Faith Kehdy analyze how small-scale CE projects in Lebanon work to advance social and environmental justice and why people are turning to a circular economy approach to address social and environmental inequalities in this context. A political ecology approach is used to study the underlying social, political, and economic drivers characterising the context through which these CE practices emerge, allowing for analyses of power dynamics at various scales. By examining grassroots circular economy solutions “from below”, the authors argue that CE projects that are designed to respond to histories of power and inequality have greater potential to advance socio-ecological justice by creating innovative models for resource (re)use and distribution (Rosenbaum and Kehdy 2022). Such projects illuminate a productive contrast to commodified, “anti-political” implementations of the circular economy by prioritising who and what is most harmed by the unmitigated growth of capitalism.

Karin Bradley and Ola Persson explore the rationales and practices of community-led repair movements against the corporate-led product repair narratives within circular economy discourses. The study is based on two Swedish cases of community repair in practice, supported by a broader comparison with documented cases of community repair in Europe. Using materialist feminist theoretical perspectives, they demonstrate that the mainstream circular economy discourse and the discourse around Do-It-Yourself (DIY) community repair rest on two different main visions. The first is presented as a technocratic and de-politicised process premised on eco-modernist logics, often neglecting the role of consumers in the repair work that is mostly placed in producers’ hands, the second tends to appeal to degrowth visions in terms of conviviality, non-market-based relationships and “post-work” society, where the consumer has full ownership and autonomy for the use of their products. They argue for “the provision of open digital and physical DIY repair infrastructure” (Bradley and Persson 2022, 1334). Their findings show that “the path towards more circular economies is not a consensus win-win journey, but is instead characterised by diverging perspectives on the roles and powers of citizen-consumers and corporations as well as on the control of materials, skills, and resources” (Bradley and Persson 2022, 1323).

By contrasting circular business models (CBMs), Sebastian Carenzo, Paula Juarez, and Lucas Becerra outline two different anchorings for circularity: corporate-led privatisation of informal activities and grassroots-led formalisation of common activities. The research compares the political ecology of two cases of recycling initiatives in Argentina, analyzing how these initiatives have dealt with the formalisation of informal recyclers. Their analysis characterises and compares CBMs focusing on: (i) relation between social inclusion and formalisation; (ii) dynamics of innovations; (iii) knowledge production; and (iv) potential for the creation of novel circular loops. The authors identify two contrasting CBMs: the “corporate CBM” and the “grassroots CBM” and find that: “the corporate CBM advocates for the conversion of informal recyclers as a low-skilled workforce in private recycling facilities, the grassroots CBM aims to foster the recognition their cooperatives as providers of recycling as a public interest service, including the specific techno-cognitive skills they have developed towards recycling discarded materials” (Carenzo, Juarez, and Becerra 2022, 1350–1351). They propose the development of circular loops organised through grassroots governance “towards strengthening forms of collective engagement for the public good, raising a brand new perspective on how to build up situated CBMs, which are not only environmentally sustainable, but also socially just” (Carenzo, Juarez, and Becerra 2022, 1351).

Strategies to reduce consumer demand and narrow resource requirements for key services may have unintended and inequitable consequences that jeopardise the opportunity for a just and inclusive transition to CE. Mikko Jalas and Sini Numminen approach this challenge by drawing on specific examples of strategies to regulate access to transport and electricity services through demand pricing. They assert that while flexible pricing schemes have economic and environmental benefits, the social equity implications are underexplored. Their analysis raises concerns that dynamic pricing forges new everyday rhythms and shifts consumption patterns, which can disrupt individuals’ normal activities, cause temporal dislocations, and alter social relations (Jalas and Numminen 2022). The key precondition for social justice in such arrangements is to account for the broad constituency of flexibility and social rhythms among diverse populations. Their work brings attention to the social conditions and consequences of circular transformations: “Whether the circular economy discourses and politics should promote shift consumption and how best to account for the heterogeneous effects of such schemes on the participating people will be a perennial question, as scarce environmental means are organised to meet a legitimate need for services” (Jalas and Numminen 2022, 1368).

André Nogueira and João Felipe Wallig share the case of an ongoing urban redevelopment process in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Drawing on the activities of Vila Flores (VF), a community based organisation focused on collective urban practices (CUP), they generalise lessons about its organisational structure, core competencies and approach to restore and regenerate local circular economies in post-industrial territories. They apply a set of design frameworks to describe how the observed interventions enable VF to contribute with just, sustainable, and equitable dynamics of daily life. Their analysis suggests that there are two core organisational competencies enabling VF to achieve positive outcomes: “(1) inclusive participatory processes that build trust among autonomous agents due to network orchestration grounded in the local territory, and (2) readiness to respond to emerging needs and opportunities due to its flexibility in resource allocation and circulation” (Nogueira and Wallig 2022, 1384). They conclude that “the intersection of CE, CUP, and design presents a powerful space for resisting the penetration of initiatives that contribute to the degradation of the local environment and, perhaps more importantly, enhancing a territory’s cooperation by strengthening its local socio-economic activities” (Nogueira and Wallig 2022, 1390).

Aravindhan Nagarajan aims at identifying the gap between the global framework of waste minimisation and the actual operations of waste recovery and recycling in a Global South context. The article examines implementation of national level regulations on plastic waste, court cases in the High Courts of India, and the impact of single use plastic bans on the unorganised sector in the city of Mumbai. The goal is to explain the importance of recycling as a productive activity, and the need to incorporate concerns of workers and small-scale business owners from the unorganised sector, in order to achieve a just transition to circular materials management. The results suggest that “current regulations on waste minimisation in developing countries such as India, ignore the need for improving capacities of the unorganised sector. Further, these regulations are implemented in a manner that is detrimental to workers employed in the sector” (Nagarajan 2022, 1395). He argues that sustainability and circular economy approaches pushed by the Global North need to better account for the value created by the unorganised sector in the creation of closed loop linkages of material use and waste management.

Final reflection

The collection of articles represent a range of approaches and perspectives on the intersection and challenges of justice and social equity in the circular economy. There is a diverse geographic representation of case studies, from Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, and India. Two of the articles have broad international representation, comparing and drawing similarities in experiences of workers in three African, three Asian, and three American cities (Hartmann, Hegel, and Boampong 2022) and ecological conflicts across the world (Martinez-Alier 2021). However, uniquely African, Indigenous, Small Island, or rural perspectives are missing. It is imperative that we expand the space for voices from the Global South to take and lead on the narrative for CE, in order to learn from current practices and tensions from those groups. It is also important to account for the pluralistic perspectives of the majority of the global population who live in those regions, if the circular economy is to avoid perpetuating the inequalities of the linear capitalist economy, and work for the global majority.

There are many additional research opportunities at this intersection, which could benefit from further exploration in diverse contexts. Several authors distinguished how formal CE policies, business models, and practices, often neglect the lived experiences and aspirations of community members, particularly those from marginalised groups such as immigrants, low income, and informal economy actors (e.g. Nagarajan 2022; Wuyts and Marin 2022). A few examined how these types of actors are developing circular practices independently of, or in resistance to, these formal efforts (e.g. Bradley and Persson 2022; Carenzo, Juarez, and Becerra 2022). This presents a rich area for future research, as these contestations will determine who controls the narrative for CE and how it is implemented and accepted in different parts of the world, and in distinct cultural contexts. Researchers may also explore issues such as how to develop productive pathways to achieve sustainability by utilising resources more effectively, while ensuring that diverse actors are represented and that their needs and initiatives are weighed fairly in circular development choices. In this regard, policymaking and planning practices need appropriate tools and knowledge to integrate and assess social justice equity in relation to the implementation of CE (e.g. Gyori 2022; Jalas and Numminen 2022; Nogueira and Wallig 2022), and researchers can help to analyze unintended consequences of circular economy proposals, in order for such proposals to be equitably implemented at different governance scales.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).