There’s no doubt that the circular economy is a popular term. It’s used in a whole range of contexts. There are hundreds of reports from businesses, think tanks and NGOs e.g. the Ellen MacArthur foundation. There’s a whole range of academic papers, potentially constituting a new academic field. And it’s referenced in policies at the local, national, regional and international scales; here in Europe the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan is particularly important. And there’s a good reason it’s popular, it has the potential to help resolve many of the environmental issues we face, whilst still providing economic and social benefits.

But it’s not a straightforward solution. It’s complicated to get right and there are lots of barriers to circularity including technical challenges, rebound effects and the Jevons paradox. In this context, it’s important that we have a shared understanding of what the circular economy is trying to achieve. The problem? The circular economy is not easy to define.

In a review of 221 definitions of the circular economy written between 2017 and 2021, no aim or concept of the circular economy was found in more than half of the definitions. In other words, core concepts such as sustainable development, environmental quality, economic development, social equity, and even waste reduction, weren’t mentioned in the majority of definitions. As other scholars have also noted, even as more and more definitions for the circular economy have been proposed, they often have conflicting or contradictory meanings. If you want to read more about some of these issues you might be interested in the book “The Impossibilities of the Circular Economy: Separating Aspirations from Reality” which is available open-access. A summary of the book is also available as a short comic.

What does this mean for CircleUp?

The CircleUp project is strongly committed to the circular economy. We’re a CCRI project (Circular Cities and Regions Initiative – the EU’s circular economy network). The circular economy is so central to our project that we have the word circle in our title. So, how do we deal with the challenges of the circular economy?

Last year, at a project meeting, we held a workshop all about definitions of the circular economy. We each proposed a definition that we liked and then went through several rounds of discussion and voting to see if one definition would be most popular. The result? There was no clear winner. Although we had some brilliant discussions during the workshop, there was no obvious outcome in terms of finding a shared definition. This definition indecision hasn’t got in the way of us progressing on the project, we’ve been working hard to develop all our behavioural interventions with households. But it could present some challenges in the future. In particular, it raises questions about how we engage with the households we work with. Do we make it explicit that we’re interested in the circular economy or do we use other language such as waste reduction? How do we communicate the concept clearly to households if we can’t even agree on a definition between us? Is it dishonest of us to put so much energy into engaging households around a concept with so much uncertainty?

As is probably clear from this blog, we don’t have all the answers yet. But these challenges are part of what CircleUp is looking to solve. Exploring how to meaningfully engage households and communities with the circular economy and gathering stories from people about how they relate to the circular economy and what actions they take.