The Circular Economy in Europe

Critical Perspectives on Policies and Imaginaries

Zora Kovacic, Roger Strand, Thomas Völker

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429576614
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Economía
• Sous-sujet: Economía medioambiental

The Circular Economy in Europe presents an overview and a critical discussion on how circularity is conceived, imagined, and enacted in current EU policy-making. In 2013, the idea of a circular economy entered the stage of European policy-making in the efforts to reconcile environmental and economic policy objectives. In 2019 the European Commission declared in a press release that the Circular Economy Action Plan has been delivered. The level of circularity in the European economy, however, has remained the same.

Bringing together perspectives from social sciences, environmental economics and policy analysis, The Circular Economy in Europe provides a critical analysis of policies and promises of the next panacea for growth and sustainability. The authors provide a theoretical and empirical basis to discuss how contemporary societies conceive their need to re-organise production and consumption and explores the messy assemblage of institutions, actors, waste streams, biophysical flows, policy objectives, scientific disciplines, values, expectations, promises and aspirations involved.

This book is essential reading for all those interested in understanding how ideas about the circular economy emerged historically, how they gained traction and are used in policy processes, and what the practical challenges in implementing this policy are.

Part I

Circular economy as a policy concept

1 Introduction

The sixteenth century map

The first chapter introduces the reader to the policy concept of the circular economy and provides them with a first understanding of the structure of the argument in the book. Both for stylistic and methodological reasons, we do so by introducing the metaphor of “the sixteenth century map”. Sixteenth century maps were intended to be accurate representations of the world but not from “the view from nowhere”. The ideas, dreams and fears of the authors of these maps were ubiquitously present in the maps, for instance in the shapes of monsters and unicorns. What is known and thought about the circular economy so far indeed resembles a sixteenth century map, in which ad hoc detailed information is combined with imprecise notions of circularity. Repeatedly, the book will return to this metaphor, critically discussing the implications of navigating by such a map. Chapter 1 takes up the question “What is the circular economy?” and shows that it might actually be a lot of things at the same time while also being different things in different places. The chapter also introduces the structure of the book and briefly describes each chapter that follows.

Has the circular economy been delivered?

On the 2nd December 2015, the European Commission – the executive power of the European Union – issued a press release with the title “Closing the loop: Commission adopts ambitious new Circular Economy Package to boost competitiveness, create jobs and generate sustainable growth” (European Commission, 2015b). The press release emphasised the high ambitions and broad scope of this new policy initiative: “The Package has broken down silos in the Commission and contributes to broad political priorities by tackling climate change and the environment while boosting job creation, economic growth, investment and social fairness”.

Three and a half years later, on the 4 March 2019, the European Commission released news on the results of the 2015 initiative:

Three years after adoption, the Circular Economy Action Plan can be considered fully completed. Its 54 actions have now been delivered or are being implemented. According to the findings of the report, implementing the Circular Economy Action Plan has accelerated the transition towards a circular economy in Europe, which in turn has helped putting the EU back on a path of job creation.

(European Commission, 2019)

Figure 1.1 is a facsimile of the news release, with its title “Commission delivers on Circular Economy Action Plan”.

Figure 1.1 Facsimile of European Commission press release on the Circular Economy Action Plan, dated 4 March, 2019

This book was written during the period January–July 2019, by Zora Kovacic, Thomas Völker and Roger Strand, three researchers who worked and lived in Europe. Did we experience that we now lived within a circular economy, as indicated by the news from the European Commission? Not at all. Europe of 2019 was quite similar to Europe of 2010 or 2000, namely a modern society characterised by very high and clearly unsustainable levels of consumption of natural resources. During the following chapters, the readers of this book will have ample opportunities to learn that the economic system of modern industrial societies is not circular, cannot be circular and is not on the way of becoming circular in the sense that natural resources are used again and again and there is no need for extraction from Nature anymore. We shall see later that it is by no means trivial to define or measure the degree of circularity of the economy. By the relevant EU institutions’ own measures, however, the increase has been measured in decimals – from 11.0% to 11.7% and perhaps 12%. Later chapters will enter into the details.

How should one understand, then, statements such as those above, from the European Commission? Cynics in the world of social science as well as in the real world outside of academia would tend to explain the statements rather than understanding them. They might explain them in terms of the interests of the actors who delivered the statements. Press officers might feel the need to please and comply with the civil servants and politicians responsible for the policies, and the latter might feel the need to boast about good results in order to strengthen their position in institutional logics and hierarchies and towards the electorate. While such explanations may be informative, the problem with them is that we still do not understand the statements, that is, unless we dismiss them as being expressions of bad faith. In our work with the circular economy, however, we never observed bad faith. Most of the time, the very opposite was the case. In numerous conversations and discussion about the policies related to the circular economy we encountered highly committed and intelligent individuals who were sincerely devoted to developing a more sustainable future Europe. Accordingly, our research challenge became one of not only elucidating the social structures that enabled and shaped the policy discourse of the circular economy in Europe. It also involved a hermeneutic task of getting a sense of what a reasonable, knowledgeable, well-intended European civil servant might mean if he claimed that the circular economy had been delivered. As an author team, the three of us are a highly interdisciplinary crowd both between ourselves and within each individual, having been trained in and worked in and with fields as different as economics, environmental social science, science and technology studies (STS), biomedicine, philosophy of science, ethics, environmental philosophy and more, fields that have very different approaches to research and the investigation of statements and states of affairs. To us and our academic curiosity, the circular economy has been a gold mine, a Pandora’s box of strong and contradictory claims about the economy and the environment and what ought to be done with the two. Part of our hermeneutic approach has been to ask a question that we learned from our mentor and colleague, Silvio Funtowicz, one of the founders of post-normal science (to be explained in later chapters): In what kind of world would this statement make perfect sense? What can we learn about the meanings, policies and imaginaries of the circular economy by regarding them as being uttered in meaning-making contexts? In this book, we shall pay visits to several such contexts, political as well as scientific ones, contemporary as well as historical, and on different sides of the political spectrum and the various cultures in the world of science. At the same time, within the multiplicities of systems, meanings and voices, we have come to regard the topic of the circular economy as important if not key to understand what many would regard as the central challenge of our time: How do we (Europeans) care for our human needs and our social and economic systems without destroying or degrading the natural environment that ultimately provides us with the basis for our life and our social and economic activities?

The sixteenth century map

What is the circular economy, then? The answer is anything but straightforward. The book will revolve around three main ideas: the circular economy is a policy in the making, it is an imaginary about the future, and it is far removed from what is known about the economic process in biophysical terms. Throughout the book, we will analyse many definitions, and focus on how the concept has evolved in the European policy context. As a starting definition, the circular economy is an alternative to the linear economy, in which natural resources are extracted, used and discarded. Circularity involves recycling, increasing product durability, creating repair and restore cultures, sharing economies, and many more ideas. Natural resources enter the economy and then are re-used for as long as possible, reducing both the need for resources, and waste and emissions. This general definition, however, refers to a blurred picture: many of the concepts and ideas that compose the circular economy are not well defined, and some are in contradiction with each other. The circular economy is best understood as an assembly of many different ideas and initiatives.

The difficulty of generating a well-defined picture of the circular economy can be partially explained by the fact that the process of defining the circular economy is still on going and partially by the complexity of what is to be governed. One of the main ideas of the circular economy is to reduce waste. Yet, there are many different ways of accounting for waste that make it hard to know how much waste is produced in Europe and how much is, and could be, recycled. Waste is accounted both by source, that is, classified as municipal waste, industrial waste, construction waste, agricultural waste, and by stream, that is, plastic waste, metal waste, food waste, wastewater, etc. These two accounting methods overlap, as for example, municipal waste includes part of plastic waste. Overlaps make it difficult to identify double accounting and gaps. The difficulty in accounting for waste is well recognised, and the European Commission has increased its effort to close some data gaps, as for example regarding food waste. Policy, however, does not stand still waiting for data to be produced. Metaphorically, we may say that the European Commission is navigating with a sixteenth century map as its reference.

The sixteenth century map is a metaphor used by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in its 2013 report, in which the Foundation estimates the economic benefits of the circular economy for the European Union. The report, however, cautiously remarks that “What came out clearly resembles a 16th century map more than an exact account of the complete economic benefits” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013: 6). This is a fascinating metaphor to be used in such a report. Maps, as they are usually understood, are intended to be representations of the world, aiming to be as accurate as possible. As such they give information about the relative position of things, distances between different points and are thus useful tools for navigation. Furthermore, they define spatial boundaries, delimit particular areas and demarcate them from others. In doing so maps also create spatial classifications as for example in maps depicting waste production or maps about circular economy initiatives. On the other hand, maps can contribute to a shared sense of belonging as for instance maps depicting the boundaries of sovereign nation states do. This kind of map is closely tied to censuses and both cultural technologies co-emerged with bureaucratic modes of governance. In addition, maps can show historical changes over times. All of these different features of maps make them ideal instruments to lend authority and legitimacy to decision makers. Consequentially, maps as sources of authoritative state power can be and have been contested. This is happening for example recently in DIY mapping activities, in which public maps depicting for example oil spill after disasters are challenged. The stories told in sixteenth century maps, however, are slightly different and less about accuracy and state power.

An example of sixteenth century maps can be seen in Figure 1.2. These maps were not intended to be “the view from nowhere”. The ideas, dreams and fears of the authors were ubiquitously present in the maps, for instance in the shapes of monsters and unicorns. We find this metaphor to be very fitting to the circular economy, in which the dreams of economic growth and fears of environmental catastrophes of its promoters, rather than a precise map, provide the rationale for the support of this concept.

Figure 1.2 The sixteenth century map

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carta_Marina.webp

Both the hopes and the knowledge gaps are evident in EU regulation. For instance, in the amendment of the waste directive, focus is put on municipal solid waste, even though this source of waste accounts for at most 10% of total waste. Policies focus on municipal solid waste, because this type of waste is accounted for in statistics and is easier to monitor than industrial waste, which may be traded between countries. The lack of reliable information on the remaining 90% of waste is not seen as a problem. Rather than considering the different challenges associated with different sources of waste, potential success in the management of municipal solid waste is seen as a proxy for success elsewhere.

Municipal waste constitutes approximately between 7 and 10% of the total waste generated in the Union; however, this waste stream is amongst the most complex ones to manage, and the way it is managed generally gives a good indication of the quality of the overall waste management system in a country.

(European Commission, 2015a)

The consequence of navigating by a sixteenth century map is that the good intentions behind the circular economy may result in contradictory policies. For instance, non-recyclable waste may be used in incinerators to produce electricity, a loop called waste-to-energy. Incineration, however, requires a minimum input of waste to function determined by its technical specifications, which make the technology incompatible with varying quantities and qualities of waste, and economically unviable for sporadic use which depends on waste that cannot be used otherwise. Incineration, in other words, provides an incentive to avoid recycling (Finnveden & Ekvall, 1998; Morris, 1996). This tension is recognised in European policy, which refers to incineration as an option for non-recyclable waste (European Commission, 2017).

The difficulties associated with the definition of the circular economy and with contradictory policies will bring us to a discussion of the challenges of complexity and uncertainty for governance. In the final part of the book, we will consider whether it is possible to have a complete map that guides policy making, or whether a twenty-first century map is better understood as guidelines through the difficult debates, controversies, the disagreements in values and the high stakes involved in ambitious projects that aim to restructure the economy.

Part I: The circular economy as a policy concept

As it often happens with policy proposals in the European Union, the concepts used are not precisely defined, different member states have different stakes in the circular economy and different visions of what the circular economy should be. We will return to this question in all the chapters (1–4) of Part I, to understand how different the ideas of what the circular economy is, or should be, are presented and influence each other.

As part of the empirical material for this book, we conducted research interviews with policy officers in the Directorate General for the Environment, the Directorate General for Growth, and the European Environment Agency, and we organised: i) a focus group (June 2017) with representatives of the Directorate General for the Environment, the Directorate General for Growth, the Directorate General for Agriculture and the Directorate General for Energy, and two workshops; ii) one hosted by the Joint Research Centre at Ispra, Italy (February 2018); a...

Table des matières

• cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• PART I: Circular economy as a policy concept
• PART II: Critical perspectives
• PART III: The future of change
• Index