Martin Calisto Friant, Walter J.V. Vermeulen, Roberta Salomone

Introduction: the circular economy as a contested umbrella concept

In about a decade, the circular economy (CE) rose from a niche concept in the sustainable production and consumption literature to become a major component of any business, government or civil society discourse on sustainability. A google search for “circular economy” in 2012 would lead to 22.600 results, the same search now leads to over 190 million hits. However, the CE is nothing new, the metaphor of a circle to represent a sustainable economy has existed at least since the 1970s with Barry Commoner’s magnum opus, “The Closing Circle” (Commoner, 1971). The idea of a society that works in harmony with the natural cycles of the earth can be traced even further back to the ancestral worldviews and ways of life of indigenous peoples throughout the globe (Kothari et al., 2019). The current definition and forms of implementation of CE are very diverse and still very much contested, with many different actors proposing different visions and discourses of CE, depending on their socio-economic perspectives and interests (Korhonen et al., 2018). This article aims to shed light on 4 possible circular futures and their socio-ecological implications for human and planetary wellbeing. To do so we will examine the 4 circularity discourses developed by the research of Calisto Friant et al. (2020) to explore the type of society that each discourse type could lead to.

The Circularity Discourse Typology as a tool to better understand the broad range of circular futures

To better navigate the diversity and complexity of CE visions and ideas, Calisto Friant et al. (2020) developed a 2x2 typology of circularity discourses that divides all CE discourses based on 2 criteria. First, whether discourses are optimist or sceptical regarding the possibility that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation fast enough to prevent a socio-ecological collapse. Second, whether discourses are holistic by including social justice and political empowerment considerations or segmented by focusing on resource efficiency alone. This differentiation leads to 4 broad circularity discourse types: Technocentric Circular Economy (optimist and segmented), Reformist Circular Society (optimist and holistic), Transformational Circular Society (sceptical and holistic), and Fortress Circular Economy (sceptical and segmented) (see Figure 1).

To help visualize what each of these discourses represents in concrete terms, our team worked with an artist to develop a visual representation of the 4 discourse types (see figure 2)[1]. The image details the type of future and socio-economic system that each circularity discourse would bring about by 2050, with the mix of agricultural, industrial, housing, energy, consumption, and transport systems they would engender.  

Technocentric Circular Economy (TCE) discourses are optimist about the capacity of technology to prevent socio-ecological collapse as well as segmented as they don’t include social justice and political empowerment considerations (see figures 1 and 3). These discourses seek to reconcile economic development with ecological sustainability through innovative business models and technological breakthroughs, especially in resource recovery, biotechnology and renewable energy.

In a TCE future, industrial output and energy demand continue to grow by using many different sources of energy including solar panels, wind turbines, hydrogen, biofuels, nuclear, and even fossil fuels such as gas and oil with carbon-capture and storage technology to prevent greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture is highly efficient and automatised and uses artificial intelligence, robotisation, biotech and genetically modified organisms to increase resilience and productivity and reduce losses. Transport systems include high-tech innovations such as autonomous vehicles, high-speed rail, and passenger drones as well as green aircraft powered by biofuels, hydrogen or electric batteries. Buildings are made from recovered or innovative sustainable materials and are packed with smart technologies, which allow energy-efficient insulated housing, malls and offices to rise surrounded by green walls, wind turbines and solar panels. New recovery technologies and businesses flourish in this society, with a myriad of innovations to recycle all types of waste, and repair, remanufacture or refurbish disused products.

Many industries switch from selling specific goods like cars, smartphones, and washing machines to providing services like transportation, cleaning, lighting, or computing (so-called, product service systems). Industries also start producing closer to consumption markets with innovative robotization and machine learning technologies. This also allows for a strong symbiosis between and within urban and industrial clusters, which efficiently and continuously re-use and recuperate wastes to manufacture new products. Social considerations are not addressed by TCE visions, so current social relations and working practices remain more or less unchanged, thereby replicating present racial, class, gender, property, health, and ethnic disparities. Overall, a TCE vision seeks to create a highly productive and efficient society with an abundance of technical solutions that allow for high material standards of living and the continued reproduction of capitalist socio-economic relations.

Reformist Circular Society (RCS) discourses are optimist about the capacity of technology to prevent socio-ecological collapse and holistic as they integrate many social justice and political empowerment considerations (see figures 1 and 4). These discourses seek to create a sustainable circular future through a combination of innovative business models, social policies and technological breakthroughs. RCS visions thus add a social justice lens to the many technological and business innovations of TCE visions. An RCS society combines high-tech innovations and industrial processes with greater care for workers' wellbeing and respect for human rights. It is a society where technology has brought nature closer to humans with a myriad of nature-based solutions like green walls and parks that mitigate heat waves and floods.

It is a future where industrial processes operate like natural ecosystems, sharing resources between localised manufacturing hubs and cities to continuously reuse wastes to produce new goods. Innovative technologies like robotisation, 3D printing, chemical recycling, big data, and artificial intelligence enable the re-localization of industrial processes and the mining of urban areas for secondary materials. This is all powered by abundant renewable energy provided by large-scale solar farms, geothermal plants, and wind turbines. This energy grid also provides plenty of power for an electrified transport system combining high-speed rail, autonomous vehicles, and passenger drones, with electric scooters, buses, bikes, and aeroplanes. Buildings are constructed with recovered resources and sustainable bio-sourced materials. Urban spaces are optimised, renovated, insulated, and greened as much as possible. The need for offices and housing is reduced thanks to co-working and house-sharing platforms. A myriad of sharing economy activities emerge tanks to new information technology platforms enabling people to rent, lend and share tools, knowledge, work, cars, bikes, resources and much more.

In this networked economy, people become less inclined to own products and rather seek access to their transportation, cleaning, computing and other needs. Companies thereby switch from selling products to providing services through product-services systems like leasing phones and washing machines instead of selling them. Agriculture systems are sustainably transformed by combining organic agricultural practices with high-tech innovations like vertical farming, aquaponics, hydroponics, autonomous tractors, bio-digestors, and genetic engineering. This enables the provision of diverse diets of fresh produce for humans, the production of biofuels for energy use, and the efficient re-utilisation of urban organic waste for compost. Local governance structures are revitalised and democratised with stronger, more open, and accountable representative institutions. While privately owned corporations remain the norm, and capitalist power relations subsist, a greater voice is given to unions, workers, and stakeholders in business boards. A triple bottom line of profit, planet, and people thus guide corporations and help create socially responsible and environmentally sustainable business models.

Transformational Circular Society (TCS) discourses are sceptical about the capacity of technology to prevent socio-ecological collapse and holistic as they integrate many social justice and political empowerment considerations (see figures 1 and 5). These discourses seek to create a fair, democratic, de-colonial and sustainable post-capitalist future where humanity and nature live in mutual harmony by re-localizing and redistributing power, wealth and knowledge. It is a society where industry belongs to workers, democratic public institutions, and communities rather than investors and bondholders. A society where power is equally shared amongst all thanks to a plurality of deliberative democracy innovations such as citizen assemblies of randomly selected citizens, participatory budgeting processes, referendums, and citizen initiatives.

It is an economy that redistributes wealth and resources from those that have the most to those that have the least thanks to high taxes on wealth and a diversity of social justice programs like job guarantees, universal healthcare, public childcare, free education, abundant social housing, social security etc. It is also an economy run through care, reciprocity, and solidarity with an abundance of cooperative and community programs to care for humans and non-humans alike such as repair cafés and networks, community gardening, local support groups, cooperative stores and sharing initiatives, convivial biodiversity conservation and ecosystem regeneration projects etc. Working time is reduced to allow people to be involved in all the above community activities or any personal, artistic, spiritual, relational, or family project. Productive work, personal achievement and competition are no longer the foremost goals in life, allowing for slower, more meaningful, and convivial forms of life.

Citizens thereby gain a renewed sense of freedom and control over their time and the meaning they wish to give to their lives. Industrial and manufacturing systems are as low-tech as possible and focus on providing for tangible human needs rather than for endless artificial wants. Products are highly durable, and easily repairable, with open patents and manuals that facilitate modularity and innovation. People thus partake in a plurality of repair, repurpose and do-it-yourself activities that give them tangible control over their material resources. Global energy use is reduced to sustainable levels for the biosphere, and it is shared to ensure enough energy is available for everyone. Moreover, energy is produced in socially and environmentally respectful manners thanks to decentralised energy grids of community-owned renewable sources like wind turbines, geothermal plants, and solar panels. All agriculture is organic, highly biodiverse, and as local as possible, utilising urban food waste for community composting and urban agriculture. Cooking and food preparation is slowed down, with deep care and appreciation for diverse, healthy, plant-based ingredients that ensure human and planetary wellbeing.

Transportation needs are reduced as much as possible by planning walkable cities, with easy access to local markets and public services thanks to plenty of green spaces, accessible sidewalks, and bike lanes as well as free and quality public transport systems. Long-distance travel is reduced to a minimum, and, when necessary, happens by train and supports community tourism that respects local cultures and ecosystems. Construction of additional buildings is also reduced to a minimum by focusing instead on repurposing unused buildings and preventing the unfair and unsustainable accumulation of building stock. This leads to convivial cities and neighbourhoods with access to local markets, green areas, communal spaces, urban gardens, and public services for everyone, regardless of class, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability or age. All in all, in a TCS future not only are resources shared and cycled in slower, fairer and more sustainable manners but power, technology, knowledge, wealth and care are cycled and shared in fundamentally democratic and redistributive manners.

Fortress Circular Economy (FCE) discourses are sceptical about the capacity of technology to prevent socio-ecological collapse and segmented as they don’t include social justice and political empowerment considerations (see figures 1 and 6). They describe a future where biophysical stability is severely weakened and geostrategic resource security is sought through technological innovations and top-down controls on people and resources. FCE discourses are concerned about the tangible shortages caused by overpopulation and the overconsumption of natural resources. Yet, instead of envisioning a utopic vision to solve these socio-ecological challenges and prevent planetary overshoot, they see climate breakdown and ecological collapse as inevitable due to the entrenched nature of capitalist power relations. Therefore, rather than attempting to describe the world as it should be, FCE discourses focus on describing the world as it will most likely be if current unsustainable socio-ecological trends continue.

FCE discourses thus see a world where people seek to protect themselves and maintain access to resources despite the surrounding collapse. Protection from mass climate-induced migration is intensified with heavy security apparatus of walls, surveillance systems and migration controls. Military and economic domination and coercion are used to secure access to key resources and build high-tech industrial societies. Minerals for wind turbines and solar panels, uranium for nuclear power plants, and land for bio-fuels are thus obtained throughout the globe by some societies, despite global shortages that prevent others from accessing these resources. Military and police power also enables some societies to impose the conservation of critical biodiversity hotspots, and to restrict access to fossil fuels. It thereby secures key planetary functions and resources for some humans, by imposing sufficiency on all others. Islands of material wealth and abundance are hence created by neo-colonial and imperial practices. This allows some societies to maintain high-speed rail networks, autonomous vehicles, passenger drones and malls filled with electronics, clothing, furniture, and other goods for those that can afford them. Climate engineering, autonomous tractors, genetically modified organisms and biotechnology maintain a limited supply of foods that resist constant droughts, floods and heatwaves. Water scarcity and pollution are rampant, but new water-saving, decontamination and desalination technologies provide access to water for those that can pay for it. In the most powerful cities, buildings and urban systems are highly efficient and connected thanks to big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things to ensure the effective use of limited resources. Innovative recovery technologies and strong integration between powerful consumption and production centres ensure the efficient recovery, remanufacture, refurbishment, and recycling of waste materials for new products and services.

Some nations use high-tech robotisation, automatization and machine learning technologies to create eco-industrial systems with optimum labour, energy, and material efficiency. However, for most of the earth’s population, these industrial tools and resources remain inaccessible. Poverty and hunger thus persist in most of the globe, which is afflicted by constant floods, droughts, heatwaves and sea-level rise. Current racial, class, gender, property, health, and ethnic disparities are exacerbated as those with historical power are able to maintain access to the limited resources that remain. All in all, in a TCE future, a minority of people, in a few countries, secure a relative material abundance amidst a heavily degraded planetary system with strong resource constraints for most of humanity. It is circularity and sustainability for those that can afford it and imposed sufficiency for all the rest.

What discourse dominates CE debates and what discourse do people prefer?

Research on CE has found that TCE is currently, by far, the most dominant discourse in public and private institutions (Berry et al., 2021; Calisto Friant et al., 2022b, 2022a, 2021; Campbell-Johnston et al., 2020; Melles, 2021; Ortega Alvarado et al., 2021; Palm et al., 2021). CE debates and implementation to date have thus not sufficiently addressed the socio-political implications of a circularity transition and the biophysical limits to economic growth. But what would most people prefer when envisioning a circular future? There is little research on CE perceptions, two recent studies of civil society and citizen perceptions of CE in the EU show that a more holistic and socially inclusive approach to CE is preferred (Lazarevic and Valve, 2017; Repo et al., 2018). Two recent surveys in France suggest that citizens would prefer a TCS discourse. The first survey by Odoxa found that, to address current socio-ecological challenges, over 54% of respondents think it is more important to fundamentally transform our ways of life and reduce consumption levels than to invest massively in green technologies and innovations (Odoxa, 2019). The second survey by the Observatory of Utopic Perspectives found that 54.6 % of respondents prefer a sufficiency-oriented and inclusive ecological utopia rather than a growth and technology-oriented neoliberal utopia (15.9%) or a conservative traditionalist utopia (29.5%) (Observatory of Utopic Perspectives, 2019). A recent survey on CE perceptions around the world by Utrecht University and Revolve Circular found that holistic circular society discourses (TCS and RCS)  were preferred compared to segmented discourses (FCE and TCE) (51.6% vs 48.4%) and that respondents placed a high degree of importance to social justice concerns and consumption/production reduction imperatives[2].

The abovementioned research suggests that the TCE discourse, which dominates the current debate on circularity, does not align with what citizens would prefer when they are asked to think of a circular future. While these surveys have their limitations, many other studies find that, when citizens openly and freely deliberate in a well-informed, inclusive, and democratic environment, they tend to make significantly more sustainable decisions than politicians (Cabannes, 2018; Calisto Friant, 2019; Dryzek et al., 2019; Fishkin, 2018). Research even finds that, in a democratic context, citizens choose to forgo personal gains for the benefit of future generations (Hauser et al., 2014). More research is needed to gain a better picture of what circularity discourses people find most appealing and what circular economy and society policies they would choose in a democratic context. Indeed, a more diverse, democratic, and inclusive construction of a circular future is needed to better include the plurality of citizens’ discourses and perspectives on circularity. A deliberative governance process that hands decision-making power to citizens could help co-design and implement fair and sustainable circularity policies that subordinate economic growth to ecosystem limits, planetary boundaries and social justice imperatives. This democracy is also needed in the workplace by replacing the hierarchical shareholder capitalism of corporations working to generate endless profits for their stock-owners, with non-profit cooperatives owned and managed democratically by workers for the benefit of their socio-ecological communities.  

Conclusions

First and foremost, it is important to note our description of 4 circular futures is an inevitable simplification of complex visions and its main objective is to help understand the core differences across most circularity discourses to date. The past, present and future of the concept is thus much more nuanced and complex, and the actual future of humanity will likely combine elements of all the above-mentioned circular futures and visions.

Each of the above discourses has its strengths and weaknesses. RCS and TCE visions place too much hope on sustainable technological innovations to address resource shortages, climate change, and biodiversity collapse. The is clear now that decades of academic research have evidenced that the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation has not occurred and will most likely not occur on a scale sufficient to prevent climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse (Haberl et al., 2020; Hickel and Kallis, 2019; Jackson, 2016; Parrique et al., 2019; Wiedenhofer et al., 2020). On the other hand, TCS discourses are perhaps too optimistic about the possibility of transforming current capitalist ways of life, social structures, and power relations in a fair, democratic and sustainable manner. Envisioning a post-capitalist and post-growth society does seem like a far shot, especially in a discursive landscape that makes many people believe that “there is no alternative” and think that “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” (Fisher, 2009). Yet, as Christian Felber (2015) puts it, “there are plenty of alternatives” thanks to a rich history of social movements and ideas from the Global North and South alike that have proposed and enacted radically different ways of living and flourishing (like degrowth, buen vivir, ecological swaraj, steady-state economics etc.).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, FCE discourses, place no hopes either on technological innovation or on fair societal transformation. Rather, they rationally, and perhaps cynically, describe the future of humankind and planet earth if nothing is done to reverse current unsustainable trends. Yet, it is also clear that this is not a world where anyone would like to live, except perhaps some wealthy elites who own key technologies and industries and could thus maintain and grow their position of power.

One thing is certain, we live on a finite and fragile planet, that has its key boundaries and limits, and if we keep overshooting them, the earth’s climate and ecosystems will inevitably break down and collapse and key resources will be exhausted. If we decide to believe in capitalism and the idea that technology can allow us to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation, then we are bound to see key planetary functions and ecosystems fail before our eyes. However, if we develop a society, economy and way of life that can operate beyond economic growth, we might have a chance of living in a society that we can aspire to. The real choice is thus not between a TCE, RCS, TCS and FCE society but actually between a TCS and FCE society because those are the only discourses that take the very real material limits of our planet into account. Thankfully, there are a plurality of circular visions and ideas from the Global North and South that have developed a wide range of post-capitalist and post-growth societal visions (and TCS discourses described above are just the tip of the iceberg). They are a breadth of inspiration that can help us overcome the socio-ecological challenges of the 21st century. But we must be open to them and we must be aware of the systemic limits of the system that we are currently living in. Otherwise, we will replicate current patterns of ecological breakdown, climate change, resource scarcity and social injustice.

As we mentioned above, various surveys suggest that transformative and socially just circularity visions are preferred by most citizens. More inclusive and participatory development of circularity policies, where citizens can openly deliberate and decide on the course of the circularity transition in an informed and democratic manner, would thus likely allow us to overcome current lock-ins and path dependencies. We must hence first and foremost call for real democracy, one that empowers people through randomly selected citizen councils, non-profit cooperatives, and other institutions that can break powerful interests and lead the way to a socially legitimate and ecologically feasible circularity transition.

Martin Calisto Friant (a), Walter J.V. Vermeulen (b), Roberta Salomone (c)

a Corresponding Author, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3206-1214, p.m.calisto@uu.nl   

b Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5947-8688, W.J.V.Vermeulen@uu.nl  

c  Department of Economics, University of Messina, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0809-7949, salomoner@unime.it

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[1] These artistic representations (figures 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) were illustrated by Anke Muijsers from https://visual-research.studio/ 

[2] See: https://www.imagine-circularity.world/