The opening circle: four moves to rethink the circular economy

Abstract

The ‘closing of the circle’ has been advocated since the early environmental movements as a way to reconcile man and woman with nature by mitigating the destructive effects of modern technology, which threaten the very survival of humanity on the planet. More recently, the concept has been integrated into public policies and programs, leveraging the narrative of a circular economy capable of decoupling growth from resource consumption and pollution. In light of the practical and conceptual difficulties of closing the circle, this article investigates four moves to “open” rather than “close” the circle of the circular economy. The openness it proposes encourages new constructive encounters between critical theory and experimental practice, and between technical and social disciplines, in order to advance toward an epistemologically diverse understanding of circularity.

Keywords: circular economy, public policy, closed vs. open modelling, interdisciplinarity