Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy

Abstract

Heightened concerns about long-term sustainability have of late enlivened debates around the circular economy (CE). Defined as a series of restorative and regenerative industrial systems, parallel socio-cultural transformations have arguably received less consideration to date. In response, this paper examines the contributions human geographical scholarship can make to CE debates, focusing on ‘generative spaces’ of diverse CE practices. Concepts infrequently discussed within human geography such as product service systems and ‘prosumption’ are explored, to argue that productive potential exists in bringing these ideas into conversation with ongoing human geographical research into practices, materialities, emergent political spaces and ‘everyday activism’.

Full text

Article
Closing the loop or squaring the
circle? Locating generative
spaces for the circular economy
Kersty Hobson
University of Oxford, UK
Abstract
Heightened concerns about long-term sustainability have of late enlivened debates around the circular econ-
omy (CE). Defined as a series of restorative and regenerative industrial systems, parallel socio-cultural trans-
formations have arguably received less consideration to date. In response, this paper examines the
contributions human geographical scholarship can make to CE debates, focusing on ‘generative spaces’ of
diverse CE practices. Concepts infrequently discussed within human geography such as product service sys-
tems and ‘prosumption’ are explored, to argue that productive potential exists in bringing these ideas into
conversation with ongoing human geographical research into practices, materialities, emergent political
spaces and ‘everyday activism’.
Keywords
circular economy, materialities, product service system, prosumer
1 Introduction
The need to go ‘beyond incremental efficiency
gains to deliver transformative change’ (Pre-
ston, 2012: 1) is a long-standing entreaty within
socio-environmental sustainability debates.
However, what sort of change, transforming in
what direction, and by what means remain
undoubtedly highly contested questions. One
framework that has of late received increasing
political, research and civil society attention is
that of the circular economy (CE) – the focus
of this paper.
The CE has been defined as:
an industrial system that is restorative or regen-
erative by intention and design. It replaces the
end-of-life concept with restoration, shifts
towards the use of renewable energy, eliminates
the use of toxic chemicals, which impair reuse
and return to the biosphere, and aims for the elim-
ination of waste through the superior design of
materials, products, systems and business models.
(Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013b: 2; see also
Aldersgate Group, 2012; Ellen MacArthur Foun-
dation, 2013a, 2014; Lee et al., 2012)
As such, moving towards a CE necessitates sub-
stantial transformations in design, production,
consumption, use, waste and reuse practices.
Overall, the goal is to keep valuable materials
in circulation through a series of systemic
Corresponding author:
Kersty Hobson, School of Geography and the
Environment, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road,
University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK.
Email: kersty.hobson@ouce.ox.ac.uk
Progress in Human Geography
2016, Vol. 40(1) 88–104
ªThe Author(s) 2015
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feedback loops between life-cycle stages,
powered through resource-efficient industrial
processes.
Calls for a significant shift towards a more
CE through approaches such as closed loop
manufacturing have existed for decades, ema-
nating mostly from the field of Industrial Eco-
logy (e.g. Lyle, 1994). While initially such
calls were founded upon hypothetical systems
of production and reuse, advances in techn-
ological, design and retrieval processes are
rendering the theory of CE a more realistic pro-
position. This agenda has recently gained fur-
ther impetus through political concern about
issues such as ‘resource security’, believed to
be creating price volatility and thus threatening
long-term economic sustainability (e.g. Depart-
ment for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
2012). As such, solutions that fundamentally
reconfigure current production-consumption
patterns have made their way into high-level
political agendas of late. For one, the European
Commission has stated that resource efficiency
and a move towards the CE is one of its seven
‘Europe 2020’ flagship initiatives, as ‘the EU
has no choice but to go for the transition to a
resource-efficient and ultimately regenerative
circular economy’ (European Commission,
2011: 1). This transition is argued by the Eur-
opean Commission as a promising pathway to
regional prosperity, enabling the ‘reindustriali-
sation of the European economy on the basis
of resource-efficient growth that will last’
(European Commission, 2011: 1).
As well as such high hopes at the European
level, the UK Government’s ‘Resource Security
Action Plan’ (Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs, 2012) includes interven-
tions that aim to foster the CE. Beyond formal
policy circles, an array of non-governmental
organizations is gathering around the possibili-
ties of the CE. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation,
for example, was founded with the sole purpose
of promoting the CE and has been gaining nota-
ble political and business traction recently, such
as being placed front and centre at the 2014
World Economic Forum (see Confino and
Holtum, 2014).
Given all of the above, the impetus for this
paper is that it is arguably apposite and timely
to interrogate the implications of the CE. Extant
academic, policy and business-led analyses
frame transformations towards the CE as
predominantly issues of innovation, technical
systems, fiscal and business incentives, and
reformulated business models. While these
interventions are not dismissed here, this paper
is prompted by the observation that, within pre-
vailing CE debates, little has been said about the
socio-political implications and possibilities
for shifting current production-consumption-
use-waste practices. In addition, scant consider-
ation has been given to other ‘transformative’
pathways and practices, currently elided by
a focus on industrial systems and sustained
economic growth. As such, crucial questions
require greater consideration, such as the forms
and processes of governance that would facili-
tate an effective and equitable CE. In addition,
what are the implications of a CE for quoti-
dian spaces and practices, as the patterns and
rhythms of everyday socio-materiality are
potentially reconfigured? Is the CE yet another
iteration of capitalist crisis, reproduction and
survival (Harvey, 2010, 2006), or does it pro-
ductively merge disparate discourses and actors
to garner much-needed action around the mani-
fold issues of global sustainability? And what
forms of research/intervention might critical
social scientists such as human geographers
contribute to explore the above questions,
informed by which streams of conceptual and
empirical debate?
This paper aims to examine some of these
questions, arguing that human geographers are
well placed to make critical contributions to
debates about the CE, given the fundamental
disciplinary understanding that ‘Production
is ...entangled with biophysical, social, politi-
cal and cultural processes’ (Sheppard, 2011:
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324; see also Berndt and Boeckler, 2011). In
making this argument, this paper adopts a gen-
erative stance (e.g. Head and Gibson, 2012).
That is, it aims to locate and foster emergent
research spaces, with an eye to the ‘virtual pre-
sences’ (Dittmer, 2014: 388) of contingent
futures that remain underexplored within pre-
vailing CE frameworks and advocates. As the
concept of the CE touches on so many pro-
cesses, peoples and places, no one paper can
offer a complete dissection of its contents and
implications. Therefore this paper focuses pre-
dominantly on questions of socio-material prac-
tices as a key area where human geographical
debate has arguably much to contribute. Specif-
ically, it aims to bring work around materiality,
emergence, and everyday activism into conver-
sation with concepts less often discussed in
human geography – such as product service sys-
tems and ‘prosumption’ – to map out fertile
areas of debate and research. In doing so, the
paper begins with an elaboration of the concept
of the CE, discussing existing research that
intersects human geography with industrial
ecology. It then discusses some of the govern-
mental implications of the CE, drawing on an
example of electronic waste. The final section
examines the possibilities for citizen engage-
ment and reconfigured material practices
around the CE, suggesting possible sites and
topics for future research.
II What is the circular economy
and how do we get there?
Fundamentally, recent debates about the CE
respond to the perceived ineffectiveness of
existing sustainability measures, in light of pro-
clamations that global production-consumption
systems remain, and are becoming increasingly,
environmentally and socio-politically unsus-
tainable (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Wilkinson and
Pickett, 2009). In this climate, ideas of the CE
can, and arguably are, becoming potent and
reassuring discourses of a sustainable future.
In this section, the concept of the CE will be
unpacked further, along with a consideration
of some of the political agendas behind its cur-
rent rise. It is argued here and in following sec-
tions that some of the strategies currently in use
to foster the CE are in danger of repeating the
failures of ‘weak ecological modernization’
(Lane and Watson, 2012), as they sidestep
pressing socio-political issues across scales and
spaces.
Why, then, does the CE matter? At the global
level, resource use has continued to grow rap-
idly in the past few decades, spurred on particu-
larly by economic growth in Asia (Schandl and
West, 2010). Thus, the essential absolute (not
relative) decoupling of resource use from living
standards is far from taking place (Dasgupta and
Ehrlich, 2013; Jackson 2009). Not that positive
inroads have been completely absent in recent
years. There have been gains from energy effi-
ciency measures (Willis and Eyre, 2011) and
notable increases in recycling rates, e.g. 43 per
cent of UK domestic waste is now recycled
(Department of Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, 2014). However, the overall picture is
less than positive. A great deal of recycled mate-
rial ends up ‘down-cycled’ and non-domestic
recycling rates are less healthy, e.g. 75 per cent
of construction and demolition waste still goes
to landfill (Vefago and Avellaneda, 2013).
One plausible reason for the above is the pre-
dominance of ‘weak’ ecological modernization
policy frameworks and interventions in post-
industrial countries over the past few decades
(e.g. see Lane and Watson, 2012). With an
emphasis on continued economic growth and
neoliberal governmental/market-based inter-
ventions (Bakker, 2010; Bridge, 2011, 2013),
such approaches have been roundly critiqued
as ineffective at addressing the core causes of
environmental unsustainability. Instead, their
emphasis on ‘win-win’ scenarios fails to ques-
tion the status quo and offers weak policy instru-
ments and easily co-opted discourses of green
capitalism and consumerism (e.g. Dauvergne
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and LeBaron, 2012; Prudham, 2009). Yet, even
if recent analyses are only partially accurate,
such approaches have a fast-approaching expiry
date. Semi-apocalyptic proclamations suggest
we are ‘sleepwalking into a prolonged era of
resource-related strife’ (e.g. Lee et al., 2012:
xiv), where food, minerals and water resources
are stretched to breaking by over-extraction,
compounded by geographically and socially
uneven access and rights (e.g. McMahon,
2013; Rockstrom et al., 2009).
One facet of this bleak picture is the issue of
‘critical resource security’. Here resources key
to the production of goods and services are at
heightened risk of becoming unattainable
within a matter of years (e.g. House of Com-
mons Science and Technology Committee,
2011; US Department of Energy, 2010;
European Commission, 2011). In 2010 the EC
released a list of 14 crucial minerals, such as
antimony, graphite, magnesium and tungsten.
Although not nouns that trip off the tongue in
everyday talk, these minerals are currently vital
components in goods and services many of us
take for granted. For example, antimony is used
in medications and pharmaceutical products and
indium in LCDs, with both of them predicted to
become inaccessible within the next 20 years
(Cohen, 2007).
How, then, does a mineral become classified
as in danger of being critically scarce? Not an
uncontested classification, it rests upon evalua-
tions of which minerals are (a) geologically rare
and/or (b) financially unviable for extraction
due to geological dispersion and/or (c) have a
high risk supply due to political instability or
centralized control in countries with the highest
concentration, such as tantalum in the war-torn
Democratic Republic of the Congo (European
Commission, 2010). As such, critical resource
scarcity contains within it complex historical,
geopolitical and socio-material relations. Geo-
logical patterns and the locations of key
minerals intersect with a continued drive for pri-
mitive accumulation (Bridge, 2011), taking
place in locations not easily rendered govern-
able under current forms of variegated neoliber-
alism (Bakker, 2010). Political geographical
analysis has indeed underscored the inextricable
relationship between the physical properties of
minerals and other resources (oil, carbon), and
the forms of (often far from progressive) politics
that arise around their acquisition, use and
control (e.g. Le Billon, 2008; Huber, 2008;
Kennedy, 2014; Mitchell, 2009). For example,
Emel et al.’s work on sovereignty and mining
has underscored the mechanisms by which valu-
able and increasingly rare minerals are rendered
accessible beyond their geological locations.
These mechanisms hinge upon complex inter-
plays between global capital and states that are
fundamental to ‘constructing a specifically
national mode of territorial sovereignty’ (Emel
et al., 2011: 70). As such, the issue of critical
resource scarcity raises pressing questions of
capital, power and their uneven spatial manifes-
tations, which human geographers have proven
adept at illuminating.
One question that follows on from the above is
how then to intercede in a socially and environ-
mentally progressive manner. One tactic has
been to lay bare the myriad injustices at the heart
of some rare mineral extraction. For example, the
campaign ‘Raise Hope for Congo’ highlights the
violence perpetuated by ‘mineral conflict’,
including naming and shaming electronics com-
panies that fail to source ‘conflict free’ minerals
(see http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/company
rankings). Uncovering exploitative socio-
political relations embedded within everyday
‘things’ has been framed as a ‘radical’ political
strategy within and beyond human geography
(e.g. Hartwick, 2000). Here, the social and envi-
ronmental conditions of production are rendered
partially visible through, for example, life cycle
labelling and campaigning. This approach is
argued as a valid tactic to open up spaces for ‘a
new politics of consumption’ that works to
illuminate the ‘connections between precom-
modity and postcommodity phases of products’
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(Hultman and Corevellec, 2012: 2414). How-
ever, such an approach assumes much. For
example, that a label on a product is able to sig-
nificantly alter consumption patterns, despite
considerable evidence otherwise (e.g. Auld and
Gulbrandsen, 2010; Cowburn and Stockley,
2005; Eden, 2011; Grankvist et al., 2004). It also
averages out the contingencies of commodity
chain governance, assuming a certification label,
for example, is able to adequately represent the
variations in practices alonga product’s life cycle
(see McDermott, 2012). And it arguably narrows
the political register through which citizens can
and do engage with issues of consumption, ‘ethi-
cal’ or otherwise (e.g. see Barnett et al., 2005;
Cook et al., 2007).
Indeed, given the projections that numerous
crucial minerals will become inaccessible,
whether their sourcing takes places unjustly or
not, it is their substitutability and recoverability
that has become a focus for industry, research
and government (e.g. Piesing, 2013). At first
glance, this might suggest merely extending
existing resource practices, such as more
recycling of goods containing crucial minerals.
While this is part of the picture, the quote that
opened this paper underscored how a CE is
deemed to necessitate that all aspects of
production-consumption be open to scrutiny and
potentially recalibrated. This includes designing
goods that last longer (Cooper, 2005; Brook
Lyndhurst, 2011) and from which reusable mate-
rials can be more easily recovered. Also neces-
sary is the use of renewable energy during
manufacturing processes and the reuse or ‘return
to the biosphere’ of all materials.
Such propositions are not new, having been
debated for decades, mostly within the field
of industrial ecology. This sub-discipline began
synthesizing developments in ecology, systems
theory and environmental science from the
1960s onwards (Deutz, 2009; Deutz and
Frostick, 2009). Although a diverse field of
writing, a key insight from industrial ecology
is that ecosystem principles of organization and
function could, in theory, offer a model for
industrial system design. Such systems could
be formed to repeatedly cycle biological (e.g.
water) or technical (e.g. PET) nutrients through
multiple productive lifetimes of use. Attendant
notions of CE design, production and reuse/
recycling have been further developed, such as
McDonough and Braungart’s (2010) writing
on ‘cradle to cradle’ concepts (see also Lyle,
1994), which have contributed to a now lively
field of research and practice in sustainable
design (e.g. Lilley, 2009). In addition, small-
scale institutions that aim to bring theory into
practice now exist, such as the Centre for
Sustainable Design in Surrey, UK; the
Geneva-based Product-Life Institute; and the
Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute,
based in the Netherlands and San Francisco.
Thus, ideas that have existed on paper since the
1960s are now coming to life, made feasible
given advances in materials science, design
practice, information technology and govern-
ance mechanisms (Preston, 2012).
To date, human geographers have engaged
little with questions of the CE, closed loop man-
ufacturing and industrial ecology, although
there are notable exceptions. For example,
researchers have explored the planning and
development of eco-industrial parks in the USA.
Such parks are considered an essential compo-
nent of creating CE systems, as companies can
co-locate to facilitate the material interchange
and ‘energy cascading’ necessary for closed
production-consumption loops (Gibbs and
Deutz, 2005; Gibbs et al., 2005). This research
has found that, while viable on paper and
framed as tenable regional growth strategies
by policy makers, the development of such
parks have taken place with little acknowledge-
ment of, and engagement with, all-important
contextual socio-political processes, creating
less-than-successful outcomes (Gibbs et al.,
2008). As such, this research highlights the
scope and need for critical analysis of the
socio-political and economic mechanisms and
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pathways proposed and enacted under the name
of the CE. This includes the governmental inter-
ventions that aim to foster business and broader
socio-economic conditions amenable to the CE,
which – as argued in the next section – have to
date re-embedded existing regimes of governance
and failed to give credence to all that is at stake
under the auspices of the CE while espousing sig-
nificant and transformative societal change.
III Governing the circular
economy: The case of WEEE and
the modernist myth
Within extant renditions of the CE, the transfor-
mative mechanisms proposed exemplify exist-
ing forms of environmental governance under
advanced neoliberalism(s) (Bakker, 2010;
Rutherford, 2007). These include ‘green’ tax
incentives, improved product collection and
reuse, alterations to industry standards, and con-
sumers making ‘greener’ choices via education
and labelling interventions (Aldersgate Group,
2012). Replete with ecological modernization
discourses of ‘win-win’ scenarios (see Lane and
Watson, 2012), continued economic growth
within the CE allows a certain form of business
as (slightly un)usual to be sustained. For exam-
ple, the Foreword to one of the three major Ellen
MacArthur Foundation reports underscores the
economic benefits – estimated at over US$ 1
trillion per year by 2025 – of a ‘more restora-
tive’ approach to production-consumption
(Ellen MacArthur, 2014: 2). This unquestioning
trajectory of continued resource throughputs
stands in distinction to other, arguably more
marginalized, discourses and visions of the
future such as the ‘DeGrowth’ and ‘Sufficiency’
movements (Hobson, 2013). And as such, the
proposed pathways to, and goals of, the CE
arguably line up with what Gille has labelled
‘the modernist myth’, wherein individual and
collective intentions are believed to be fully rea-
lized and realize-able as ‘human bodies, and
materials can be moulded to our liking given the
right science and technology’ (2010: 1054; see
also Rose, 2013). In relation to the CE, the fun-
damental assumption is that current complex
and over-determined systems can be redesigned
and reformulated en masse and in toto. This is to
be done utilizing existing policy tools and with
little consideration of the ‘incomplete and poly-
morphic nature’ (Brenner et al., 2010) of con-
temporary practices and modes of governance,
which encompass ‘technologies, infrastruc-
tures, markets, norms, regulations and other
constituents of systems across spatial and tem-
poral scales’ (Watson, 2012: 488).
To return to the above quote from the Eur-
opean Commission (2011), it essentially pro-
poses that incremental ‘resource efficiency’
measures are the first step on the pathway to a
CE. However, evidence suggests that instigat-
ing attendant policy interventions can create a
form of governance lock-in, arguably closing
down, or at least making less probable, more
radical solutions. One example of relevance
here is the European Waste Electronic and Elec-
trical Equipment Directive (WEEED). Created
in 2003, it requires European Union Member
States to meet pre-determined electronic and
electrical waste (e-waste) collection targets and
recycling rates. Paragraph 12 of the WEEED
(European Parliament and Council of the Eur-
opean Union, 2003: 25) states that it aims to
establish ‘producer responsibility’ as a means
to stimulate the design of goods that can be
more easily repaired, reused, disassembled
and/or recycled. Central here is the concept of
extended producer responsibility (EPR), where
producers are responsible for the environmental
impact of their goods, including ‘upstream’
impacts such as material sourcing and ‘down-
stream’ impacts such as product disposal (Atasu
and Van Wassenhove, 2012). However, EPR as
an actionable governance mechanism invari-
ably intersects with and maps onto existing
modes of production, along with extant ‘modes
of governing’ waste (Bulkeley et al., 2007), as
well as socio-cultural practices and norms. As a
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result, in the UK for example the translation ofthe
WEEED intonational law has meant that produc-
ers are now responsible for financing e-waste col-
lection and treatment based on their market share
(Sander et al., 2007). Thus, what has essentially
been created is a new layer of waste collection
and recovery obligations, schemes, and actors
which – while helping to decrease the proportion
of e-waste going to landfill (see Lauridsen and
Jorgensen, 2010) – has done little to bring eco-
design principles front and centre of production-
consumption systems (see Lane and Watson,
2012). As a result, there has beenlittle shift in the
prevailing mode of waste governance, but rather a
reinforcing of out-sourcing, market-based
approaches to managing and acting on waste.
The above arguably reinforces Lepawsky’s
point (2012) that debates such as those around
e-waste management are about more than simply
the efficacy of particular schemes. Rather, they
are fundamentally about ‘how democratic forms
of politics and capitalist forms of markets are to
be assembled and distributed’ (2012: 1194). And
it is these notions of assembly and distribution
that the remainder of this paper focuses on. In par-
ticular, it is argued below that human geographi-
cal concepts and modes of research could enliven
and enrich CE debates, bringing attention to the
work done on the diversity of actors, spaces, prac-
tices and materials that are gathering around the
CE, and thus paying heed to Dittmer’s call for
us ‘to cultivate our perception of non-human
agency’ (Dittmer, 2014: 389). In short, if the
CE really requires a fundamental transformation
of how resources are thought about and utilized,
exploring the manifold – and often dispersed and
experimental – ways such transformations can
and are taking place constitutes a vital and miss-
ing component of CE debates.
IV Distributing politics and
markets in the CE
Current interventions to facilitate a CE take, as
argued above, the shape and rationale of
existing modes of governance. For example,
as part of the UK Government’s ‘Resource
Security Action Plan’, a Circular Economy
Task Force has in recent years been created in
the form of a multi-sector, public-private body.
Its role is framed as being one of ‘developing
links’, ‘addressing opportunities and concerns’,
as well as spreading ‘leadership thinking and
best practice and to provide a forum for policy
innovation’ (Department of Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs, 2012: 29). Such ‘soft’ goals
and institutional forms are far from novel
(Evans, 2012), particularly around issues of pro-
duction and consumption (see Driessen et al.,
2012). Political scientists, for one, have spent
decades categorizing and explaining how and
why these networked forms of governance
come about and operate (e.g. see Bevir, 2011,
2013). Whilst also contributing to this literature,
human geographers and other critical social
researchers have been considering the implica-
tions of shifting regulatory and governance
interventions into other modes and spaces (e.g.
Amundsen et al., 2010; Bulkeley and Betsill,
2005; While et al., 2010). This includes examin-
ing how urban and community spaces can and/
or do function as ‘transition labs’ (e.g. Nevens
et al., 2013; see also Burch et al., 2014), an
approach that recognizes the contingent and
spatially specific nature of systemic change.
Indeed, framing ‘transitions’ in the language
of experimentation is not merely a metaphorical
or rhetorical flourish. Rather, it touches upon a
potentially productive line of inquiry and
research within the ‘generative’ vein of scholar-
ship referenced at the start of this paper.
For one, the Circular Economy Task Force
(2013: 28) posits that the CE will require ‘colla-
boration and experimentation’ by a suite of
actors and across a range of practices that
extend beyond those currently at work. Such
experimentation is of a different kind to that
being undertaken in the name of, for example,
behavioural economics within various UK pol-
icy settings, such as in the Behavioural Insights
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Team or ‘nudge unit’ (see Cabinet Office
Behavioural Insights Team, 2013; Jones et al.,
2013; Whitehead et al., 2012). Rather, the colla-
boration and experimentation the Task Force,
and indeed researchers, arguably allude to can
be framed as the incubation of spaces and modes
of practice that forge new forms and modes of
collective socio-material relations.
For example, there are now a number of
semi- or non-governmental organizations work-
ing around and through ideas of the CE. Such
intermediary organizations are considered cru-
cial to connecting ‘specific and often isolated
local innovation projects with one another and
with the wider world’ (Hargreaves et al.,
2013: 868: see also Head and Gibson, 2012).
Such intermediaries currently include the envi-
ronmental think tank The Green Alliance,
which convenes the Circular Economy Task
Force; WRAP, a not-for-profit company with
a focus on facilitating greater waste prevention
and resource efficiency; the Royal Institute of
International Affairs (also known as Chatham
House), which has undertaken research around
the issues of resource insecurity and the CE; and
the Aldersgate Group, ‘an alliance of leaders
from business, politics and society that drives
action for a sustainable economy’. Finally, ‘The
Great Recovery’ is a CE project run by the
Action and Research Centre of the Royal Society
of Arts. It uses an array of online and in-person
processes to bring together actors involved in all
aspects of material design, use and recovery,
including a ‘New Designs for a Circular Econ-
omy’ competition, ‘People’s Design’ labs, and
an ‘Online Collaboration Board’.
The gathering of such diverse actors around
the CE is neither novel nor surprising in and of
itself, as intermediaries across a range of topics
are already ‘opening up space in different contexts
(whether local, policy, market, social) for new and
diverse kinds of activity’ (Hargreaves et al., 2013;
see also Carolan, 2013). What is potentially intri-
guing around and within CE spaces is their poten-
tial to acknowledge, reconfigure and redistribute
socio-material agency throughout the ‘on-going-
ness’ (Lepawsky and Mather, 2011) of goods.
That is, to serve as spaces of contemplation and/
or creation of new ‘after lives’ (Crang et al.,
2013) of objects and their constituent parts, poten-
tially mirroring, connecting with or varying nota-
bly from the existing ‘piles of circularity’
(Lepawsky and Mather, 2011: 249) that character-
ize many material relations in part of the Global
South, often out of economic necessity.
For example, the Great Recovery regularly
runs ‘tear downs’ of electronic devices, where
goods are disassembled to display the entirety
of their component parts. The ‘tear down’ has
of late become a notable practice, sometimes for
fun and art (McLellan, 2013), and sometimes as
a way to encourage the creation of ‘accessible,
extensive, and repairable hardware’ (http://
makezine.com/04/ownyourown) through expo-
sing the (il)logics written in and through the
design of current devices, such as mobiles
phones. As such, the ‘new politics of consump-
tion’ (Hultman and Corvellec, 2012) at work
here is not just about exposing injustices embo-
died in goods but also redistributing forms
of socio-material expertise, knowledge and
techne. These practices thus arguably align and
enrich modes of public engagement that human
geographers contend work in an open-ended
manner to redistribute various forms of exper-
tise (e.g. see Landstrom et al., 2011; Lane
et al., 2011). This work has explored knowledge
generation around environmental controversies
such as flooding, and situates itself conceptually
within debates about ‘political matter’ (see
Braun and Whatmore, 2010).
What, then, is the potential of ‘hands on’
forms of material engagements by an array of
publics, in envisioning new logics of socio-
material relations via enlivened/new forms of
techne (Flyvbjerg, 2001)? Such questions have
at their heart the understanding that ‘humans
and non-humans alike are material configura-
tions, not dividable, separate or separable, but
integrated, co-constituted and co-dependent.
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(Tolia-Kelly, 2013: 154). This invites further
consideration of the implications and potential-
ities of new forms of material configurations
contained within or made possible through the
CE. The next section of this paper explores this
point further through one particular – and to
date under-explored – component of CE debate:
the role of everyday spaces and quotidian modes
of resource-use practice.
V Being a circular economy citizen:
Pathways to radical product
service systems?
What then is the perceived role of the citizen
within the CE, in both mainstream renditions
of the concept and alternate visions? Under a
linear, non-circular economy, the role of the
citizen is for the most part arguably elided with
that of the consumer. Here, the individual is
willing and able to make well-informed and
rational purchase choices, as well as undertak-
ing the correct waste disposal behaviour, all in
the name of the environment (Lane and Watson,
2012). This includes buying more ‘sustainable’,
‘green’ or ‘ethical’ goods and recycling as much
waste as possible from these (and other) goods.
Such a framing of everyday sustainability has
been roundly critiqued for its individualized and
overly-rationalized rendition of what are funda-
mentally collective practices and challenges
(e.g. Barnett et al., 2005; Burgess et al., 2003;
Cohen et al., 2010; Dowling, 2010; Princen
et al., 2002; Watson, 2012). Indeed, seemingly
mundane behaviours, such as carbon offsetting
and recycling, are argued as governmental
devices that at once depoliticize the discourses
of environmentalism while engendering forms
of environmental citizenship in keeping with the
aims of weak ecological modernization (e.g.
Hobson, 2006, 2013; Marres, 2011; McDonald
et al., 2009).
For the most part, mainstream advocates of
the CE do not envisage new roles or recalibrated
modes of engagement for the consumer, but
rather rehearse the above norms of the linear
economy. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation for
one claims that the CE ‘largely replaces the con-
cept of the consumer with that of a user’ (Ellen
MacArthur Foundation 2013a: 7), and creates ‘a
new contract between businesses and their cus-
tomers’ (p. 7). The main barrier to such a shift is
argued as one of ‘consumer acceptance’ (e.g.
Aldersgate Group, 2012) of altered systems of
production and consumption, made palatable
through consumer education and engagement
(e.g. Lee et al., 2012).
This movement from ‘consumer’ to ‘user’
pertains to the business models forwarded by
CE advocates. For example, goods that are now
purchased and owned, such as carpets, washing
machines or garden tools, are instead leased.
This allows (in theory) consumers to access
goods when needed, and businesses to recycle,
repair and reuse goods through maintaining
control of ownership. Within current CE
debates, such business models are uncontrover-
sial, and successful examples exist, such as car-
pet leasing company Interface. However, within
CE debates little consideration has been given
to what exactly is at stake vis-a`-vis the accep-
tance or rejection of these modes of consuming
by citizens. For example, how and to what ends
do such business models shift or clash with per-
ceptions of consumption, consumerism and pri-
vate property? How might becoming a ‘user’
alter the spatial-temporal patterns of how house-
holds and other collectives locate, exchange and
return goods? If goods now not only have ‘after
lives’ (Crang et al., 2013) but also ‘on going’
and multiple lives, how do the current ways that
households deal with unwanted goods – that
include gifting, swapping, selling on, recycling,
and storage (Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009;
Crang et al., 2013; Gregson and Crang, 2010;
Lane, 2011; Moore, 2012) – become enlivened,
enrolled and/or reconfigured in the CE?
The concepts of the Product Service System
(PSS) and ‘servitization’ provide useful means
to think through some of the above questions.
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These frameworks and attendant literatures may
be unfamiliar territory to many social scientists,
with debates around these concepts appearing
for the most part in industry, management and
operations publications such as Journal of Clea-
ner Production (e.g. see Beuren et al., 2013;
Lightfoot et al., 2013). However, there is an
emergent literature within the social sciences
that speaks to ideas of PSS through connecting
work on theories of practice with debates about
socio-technical transformations. That is, rather
than seeing individual behaviours as the neces-
sary unit of social change, work on practices
emphasizes how patterns of action (e.g. shower-
ing) are co-constituted by histories, technolo-
gies, norms and preferences around issues of
cleanliness. As such, making practices more
sustainable requires questioning how and why
current needs are met, and thinking creatively
about other ways to meet needs such as mobility,
warmth, cooling and cleanliness (e.g. Davies
et al., 2014; Givoni and Banister, 2013; Watson,
2012): in short, reworking the ways products and
services are calibrated to meet human needs.
Tukker (2004, 2013) has mapped out the
range of possible PSSs along a continuum. At
one end, there are business models that remain
for the most part product orientated with a few
extra services included, such as leasing, renting
and sharing components of a practice. One
example is the much-lauded rise of car-sharing
schemes, which provide rented, short-term
(i.e. one hour and upwards) access to a commu-
nal car, thus aiming to alter entrenched travel
habits (see Kent and Dowling, 2013). However,
car sharing arguably does little to challenge the
centrality of the car as the predominant mode of
mobility and has been captured as a model for
business expansion by large corporations, such
as Avis’ recent purchase of Zipcar. At the other
end of the PSS spectrum are ‘result-oriented’
services where the client and provider agree in
principle upon the result required with no pre-
determined product involved. Such indetermi-
nacy and openness to the ways and means of
meeting needs is considered the more ‘radical’
end of the PSS spectrum. That is, an approach
with potential to challenge current patterns of
resource intensity and overuse, but also the most
difficult to envisage, enact and create. Perhaps,
then, there are ways in which human geogra-
phers can be part of envisioning and exploring
the possibilities of radical PSSs, starting not so
much from planning them on paper as an exer-
cise in abstraction but rather paying attention
to the emergent properties of current and nas-
cent socio-material assemblages that speak to
the inherent openness of radical PSSs.
To explain, in this journal Dittmer (2014)
argues for consideration of the capacities rather
than just the properties of geopolitical assem-
blages, understood as ‘emergent wholes defined
by their properties, tendencies, and capacities’
(p. 392). Here, while features and structures
matter in terms of outcomes, so does how prop-
erties interact with other assemblages, creating
a range of contingent futures that may not yet
be realized in material form but still can exert
a ‘virtual presence’. Arguably, traces of such
virtual presences can be located in current prac-
tices reshaping the ambit and forms of engage-
ment with everyday consumer goods and
services, potentially opening up spaces for
forms of radical PSS to emerge. In this context,
the role of human geographical research could
be to look closer for the ‘possibility spaces’
(Dittmer, 2014: 392) amidst these practices,
with an eye on the ‘vitality’ of the materialities
at play (Gregson and Crang, 2010).
But what practices are being referenced here?
There have of late been claims about an appar-
ent demise of prevailing consumption patterns
and norms, wherein the sovereign consumer is
being usurped by the rise of the ‘prosumer’
(e.g. Ritzer et al., 2012). This term – an amalga-
mation of producer and consumer – does in part
hark back to a past when most humans produced
and consumed food, clothes, etc., for them-
selves and their communities (Ritzer et al.,
2012). In its current iteration however, the idea
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of the prosumer encapsulates a wider range of
processes only tenable under the conditions of
(post)modernity. These range from productive
practices (e.g. ideas, designs) being taken up
and co-created by external agents such as for-
profit companies with the aim of producing and
capturing value: to more ‘hands on’ and loca-
lised practices of do-it-yourself, crafts, and
other examples of so-called ‘post-consumerism’
(Belk, 2014; Botsman and Rogers, 2011;
Cohen, 2013). In relation to the former, it is fea-
sible to argue that processes that aim to co-
create value between citizens and organizations
are another example of capitalist exploitation
and co-option in the face of shrinking margins
(Rifkin, 2014). However, there are other exam-
ples of joint value-creation that may – and,
indeed, on paper seek to – go beyond the cre-
ation of a new good or service, to potentially
create the emergent assemblages that Dittmer
(2014) writes of.
For example, the social enterprise Fairphone
(http://www.fairphone.com) is a Netherlands-
based organization whose core business is the
creation of a smartphone made with conflict-
free minerals, with a design that allows recov-
ery, repair and recycling in line with CE princi-
ples. The Fairphone website states that their key
principle is that of ‘responsible design’ which
considers the life cycle of the phone and ‘gives
you complete control over how to use and con-
figure it. Our adopted manifesto is ‘‘If you can’t
open it, you don’t own it’’’ (see http://www.fair-
phone.com/2013/05/17/three-years-in-the-mak-
ing-road-to-a-fairer-phone). For the Fairphone
user, this ‘complete control’ requires learning
how to ‘use and configure’ the Fairphone, which
takes place virtually via website information
and online discussion forums. A quick glance
at the content of these online forums highlights
the challenges of learning to configure a smart-
phone and negotiate the responsibilities and
challenges of electronic devices that have
functional and material flexibility built into
them. But it also highlights the capacities and
willingness of citizens to engage with the tech-
nical specifications of coding and configuring,
potentially fostering an emergent ‘Fairphone
movement’ that the social enterprise speaks
of on its website. This movement is based
not just on the technical components of the
smartphone but also on ‘creating the fairer
economy’. Such an economy is one where
exploitative extractive practices are eliminated
through conflict-free resources, with capital
generated through crowd-sourced financing.
For Fairphone this generation of capital
entailed several thousand individuals purchas-
ing the phone before it could go into produc-
tion – a move that they state aimed to
displace the politics and power of ‘old capital’,
engaging online communities of interest and
shared ethics (e.g. see Gibson-Graham, 2006).
This is not to hero- worship Fairphone or to
assume that all that appears on their website
mirrors what happens in practice. But then that
is partially the point. That is, the above example
raises questions about what emerges from
assemblages such as Fairphone, as they seek
to co-create a PSS that takes on board CE think-
ing whilst bringing in agendas of fairness, par-
ticipation and socio-material engagement of
citizens. Indeed, how do investors/users/partici-
pants – and, indeed, people who are all three at
once – become enrolled into and/or create new
‘possibility spaces’ through engagement with
the contingent functionality of the Fairphone,
which requires being more than a standard
phone user? And how do these emergent proper-
ties speak to other generative spaces, such as
Repair Cafe´s (see http://repaircafe.org), that
form in-person, temporary collectives around
repairing everyday goods? And finally, what
forms of ‘everyday activism’ emerge, wherein
individuals and groups ‘self-manage and
develop workable and replicable models for a
better life’ (Chatterton and Pickerill, 2010:
476; see also Chatterton, 2010; Pickerill and
Chatterton, 2006)? While research into forms
of everyday activism has not foregrounded the
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socio-material engagements of emergent politi-
cal practices, it does focus attention on ‘the
social and spatial settings where matters of
importance get politicized’ (Hakli and Kallio,
2014: 189). Such an approach to locating and
fostering spaces of activism stands in contrast
to those that predetermine what can be and is
labelled as political around the issues of sustain-
able production and consumption (cf. Hultmann
and Corvelec, 2012). Instead, it requires paying
close attention to spaces where disparate forms
of the CE may emerge and/or be fostered in
forms and ways that current analyses of the
CE omits or at least obscures from view.
VI Concluding comments
This paper has aimed to bring recent and grow-
ing debates around ideas of the CE into conver-
sation with some facets of human geographical
research. The aim is to outline how research into
a CE requires much broader analytical lenses
than are currently deployed, given the profound
‘transformative change’ advocates speak of.
The purpose here was to provisionally locate
generative spaces and practices that embody
a CE which goes beyond re-jigged industrial
systems and business models. Rather, the case
is made that any consideration of the CE
must encompass forms of ‘everyday activism’
that foreground the ‘vital materialism’ (Gregson
et al., 2010: 853) necessary to rethink, re-
envision, recreate, reuse and ‘move on’ the
goods and services that currently meet everyday
needs. In other disciplines, researchers and
practitioners talk of addressing unsustainable
production and consumption through frame-
works such as product service systems. This
(perhaps rather dry) phrase is not found a great
deal in human geographical work, but it does
intersect with – and arguably has much to con-
tribute to – research that explores practices
embedded within, and enacted through, multi-
scale socio-technical systems (Davies et al.,
2014; Watson, 2012).
Advocates of the CE appear to consider the
role of citizens as being the acceptance (or not)
of practices that have been formulated on their
behalf by designers, engineers, economists and
policy-makers. One key aim of this paper has
been to highlight how this presents an impover-
ished view of the properties and capacities that
new assemblages of the CE are bringing forth,
or could potentially create. That is, a seemingly
narrow set of practices and spaces for citizen
action (e.g. the High Street) are supplemented
and/or challenged by the multifarious prac-
tices of the designer-consumer-user-repairer
citizen. Indeed, as mentioned above, the Ellen
MacArthur Foundation suggests that a new con-
tract is emerging between business and the con-
sumer. In their understanding, this relates to a
direct and legally binding agreement between
two or more parties. Yet this paper is essentially
arguing that broader notions of a contract can
be evoked here, where roles, competencies and
responsibilities are redistributed and reconfi-
gured throughout the lifetime of products
and services, recalibrating the social relations
and arrangements that currently favour the
purchasing-ownership-disposal model of citi-
zen-consumer practices. Such socially transfor-
mative enactments of the CE are thus implicit
but under-explored within current debates, and
this paper has aimed to highlight the potential for
rich engagement, through both further conceptual
and empirical exploration.
Funding and Acknowledgements
This paper was written thanks to funding from the
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research coun-
cil, as part of the ‘CLEVER’ project (EP/K026380/
1). Thanks also to Jonny Hepburn for his valuable
research assistance in the early stages of this paper,
and to the reviewers for their constructive insights.
All remaining errors are those of the author.
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Author biography
Kersty Hobson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geo-
graphy in the School of Planning and Geography,
Cardiff University. She is the author of over 30 arti-
cles and book chapters on the subjects of sustainable
consumption and environmental politics, and has
held academic positions at the University of Oxford
and the Australian National University.
104 Progress in Human Geography 40(1)
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