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Last week a few students from Delft University of Technology sent me a list of questions about circular economy in Rotterdam. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, a very simple (but limited) summary is that circular economy is a collection of ideas about how we can reduce waste and other leakages of energy and material from economic systems by creating new loops in our economy (through recycling, reusing, etcetera). Circular economy is often discussed in terms of making a shift from a linear economy, in which we take virgin resources, make products out of them and then dispose of these products when they are no longer useful, to a circular economy in which products or the components or materials that they are made of are recirculated into the economy when these products are no longer used. The notion of circular economy has gained in popularity relatively recently, but it is in many ways a descendent of similar ideas (e.g., industrial ecology, blue economy, cradle-to-cradle) that have a longer history, and many of which co-exist with circular economy.
The students were hoping to speak with someone in my university (based in Rotterdam) that knows about what currently goes on in the domain of circular economy in Rotterdam. I warned them in advance that I am not aware of everything (probably of most) that goes on here under the banner of circular economy. Possibly for that reason, the students ended up sending me an email with questions, rather than having a face-to-face conversation about this. It turned out that I was indeed unable to give a direct answer to most of their questions, but for a different reason than I expected.
The questions of the students mostly asked about how feasible the implemention of "the" circular economy in Rotterdam is, what opportunities there exist for "the" circular transition in Rotterdam, what indicators are appropriate for monitoring our progress in making this transition, and how this transition relates to the pursuit of economic growth, sustainable energy and zero-waste. What struck me most in the way that these questions were phrased is the underlying assumption that there is consensus on what "the" circular economy in Rotterdam would (or should) look like. The essence of my response to all questions was: whose circular economy are we talking about here?
The questions made me realize all the more how many people seem to uncritically accept circular economy as one of the solutions to our current environmental problems; a solution that we have already mostly figured out (maybe except for some nasty details) and that we simply need to implement. In other words, many people seem to look at circular economy as technical solution. What these people seem to forget is that there are many visions on circular economy, and that many of these contradict each other. I think that is is fair to say, for example, that the vision on circular economy that dominates academic literature and policy debates (and I think also the narrative of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one of the most vocal advocates for circular economies) frames circular economy as a Green Growth strategy. This vision does not question the necessity of economic growth, but it suggests that economic growth can and should occur in a 'greener' way. However, we can also find (much rarer) visions on circular economy that align more with a Degrowth philosophy, which basically suggests that we can only make our economies ecologically sustainable by shrinking them. These two visions are radically opposed in what circular economies, and the roads towards them, look like. Between these extremes, there is a big grey area with myriad ideas about circular economies (and of course, suggesting that all thinking on circular economy fits somewhere between these two extremes is already a great simplification). In other words, circular economies are a 'wicked' issue, where many different actors are involved that represent a wide variety of (often conflicting) values and perceptions of what problems circular economies are supposed to solve and how to go about solving them.
This also means that the transition to circular economies is not a technical process, but a political process, that is, a struggle over values. As with any political process, power relations have a big impact on how this process plays out. This, I believe, explains why Green Growth-oriented visions of circular economy are dominant in contemporary academic and political debates. These visions are the least disruptive of the status quo and in many ways envision the maintenance of the status quo by patching some of its many leaks. They also tend to have a very traditional cast of key players: Companies do most of the heavy lifting by adopting circular business models, policy makers create the right circumstances for companies to be able to do so, and people in general (if they are included in the cast of actors at all) play the role of "green consumers" that understand how to read labels so that they can make "green choices". This is quite different from visions on circular economy that we can extrapolate from grassroots initiatives such as Repair Cafés and Precious Plastic, where people engage with circular economies in a more active (in my opinion more meaningful) way, which would also require us to develop certain skills (e.g., repairing and making) that have been on the decline for a long time. In these alternative visions, big business is also more often seen as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. More importantly, people are not merely consumers, but something closer to citizens.
So, I asked the students: Whose circular economy are we talking about here? The answer to that question makes a big difference for how I would assess the feasibility of making a transition towards circular economies, how we could measure that, how it relates to ideas on growth, sustainability, etcetera. I know that there are quite some initiatives unfolding in Rotterdam that wave the banner of circular economy, but I highly doubt that they add up to something consistent at a higher level. I think that the visions that will become dominant, not just in discourse, but also in practice, are probably going to be the ones pursued by the "bigger players" (e.g., the largest petrochemical companies in the port of Rotterdam have recently developed their vision of circular economy as part of their contribution to the Rotterdam Climate Agreement). I also think, somewhat cynically, that this means that circular economies, in practice, will look a lot like what we currently already have.