Brieanne Berry

As climate change intensifies, the global scientific community has increasingly called for changes to dominant systems of production–consumption–disposal, arguing that there is a need to shift to more circular economic systems – systems that prioritise source reduction and reuse over disposal and incineration. As used goods are increasingly seen as the new resource frontier, reuse practices have become mainstream. However, we question if this mainstreaming creates a net good. That is, is it instead producing a gentrified space in secondhand markets? Drawing on semi-structured interviews ( n =21) with reuse participants in Maine, we use gentrification as process of social, economic and physical changes to provide evidence that the rise of online retail platforms is also a process of gentrification in these spaces. As a result, the marginalised may find themselves priced out and pushed out of spaces that previously provided accessible wares. Indeed, to move towards a more equitable and circular future, we must find ways to ensure the most marginalised in society have equal opportunity to access quality, used goods, rather than enclosing them for the ‘pioneers’ of this resource frontier: those with the most capital to invest. Therefore, we must move beyond a goal of simplistic scaling of circular markets in order to undo the power structures that create disparate outcomes in the first place. If not, we risk recreating capitalist hierarchies within secondhand economies.

Despite the current emphasis on reuse as a primary strategy for realising more circular economic systems, researchers have questioned the assumed environmental benefits of the practice – arguing that reuse can result in unintended rebound effects that diminish or outweigh environmental gains. This article reviews studies focused on potential rebound effects in reuse practices – not as a means to re-adjudicate the environmental virtues of reuse – but rather to critically examine common assumptions about the people and practices that animate reuse markets. The article thus responds to calls for additional research on the behavioural dimensions of reuse in more circular economic systems – and the associated implications for modelling environmental impact. We draw on an in-depth study of 30 active participants in direct product reuse markets to theorise everyday circularity from a critical social science perspective. We argue, based on our observations, that environmental impact models of reuse should not assume that: (1) all forms of product reuse are the same; (2) buyers and sellers are driven primarily by price logics; and (3) new goods are the default preference. We find reuse markets to be much more fluid than imagined by environmental impact models and argue that these insights are particularly important to consider as we approach the end of cheap nature and the costs of overconsumption are increasingly clear.

With growing awareness of the environmental, economic, and social costs associated with food waste, there is a concerted effort on multiple scales to recover the nutrient value of discarded food. These developments are positive, but the rapid movement toward alternatives and the complexity of solving problems located at the intersection of economic, social, and environmental systems also have the potential to produce unanticipated risks. This paper draws upon long-term stakeholder-engaged research throughout New England, with a focus on Maine, to develop a transdisciplinary, systems-based model of the potential social, economic, and environmental risks of food waste nutrient cycling. Our effort is intended to help inform the creation of safe, functional, and environmentally benign circular food systems.

Recent disruptions in waste management, including the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s decision to limit waste imports from the United States, have shocked materials management systems across the United States. In Maine, these disruptions have been exacerbated by significant disturbances in the state’s waste management infrastructure. These shocks, emerging on multiple scales, combine to strongly impact Maine’s communities. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders involved in waste hauling, processing, outreach and education, as well as state and municipal government. Our paper explores how participants are leveraging these experiences to envision a more resilient materials management system for the state. However, as this case study illustrates, the complexity of materials management systems means that there is no single solution for ongoing, emergent, and unforeseen disruptions. Our research identifies tensions related to how to define system boundaries, the respective roles of the government and markets, issues of scale, and the dual need for both centralized and distributed solutions. Our exploration of materials management disruptions in Maine demonstrates the complexity of building and managing systems that attempt to balance the social, economic and ecological dimensions of materials management systems.

Drawing on research with food waste recycling facilities in New England, this paper explores a fundamental tension between the eco-modernist logics of the circular economy and the reality of contemporary waste streams. Composting and digestion are promoted as key solutions to food waste, due to their ability to return nutrients to agricultural soils. However, our work suggests that food waste processors increasingly find themselves responsible for policing boundaries between distinct “material” and “biological” systems as imagined by the architects of the circular economy—boundaries penetrable by toxicants. This responsibility creates significant problems for processors due to the regulatory, educational, and structural barriers documented in this research. This paper contributes to scholarship which suggests the need to rethink the modernist logics of the circular economy and to recognize the realities of entangled material and biological systems. More specifically, we argue that if circularity is the goal, policy needs to recognize the barriers food waste processors face and concentrate circularity efforts further upstream to ensure fair, just, and safe circular food systems.

Circular economies are often framed as addressing a trio of problems: environmental degradation, economic stagnation, and social ills, broadly defined. Our paper centers on this last claim – that circular economies promise social benefits. There is a dearth of literature focused on the social dimensions of circular economies (Geissdoerfer, Martin, Paulo Savaget, Nancy M. P. Bocken, and Erik Jan Hultink. 2017. “The Circular Economy – A New Sustainability Paradigm?” Journal of Cleaner Production 143 (February): 757–768. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.12.048.), and even less attention to the meaning of social justice in the context of circular economies, let alone how it might be enacted in policy and practice. Drawing on data generated from focus groups with circular economy experts and a content analysis of US-based governmental, NGO, and business literature on circular economies, we explore whether and how justice emerges in circular economy discourse. We explore the narratives that these actors use to describe justice, and the barriers they see in achieving just and inclusive circular economies. We aim to identify the ways in which social justice is defined and discussed – or not – by the actors who seem to be most actively pushing for a circular economy (CE). Our work addresses the critical need to articulate clearly what it is we mean by social justice in relation to the CE. For if the CE is to contribute to sustainable social transformations, justice must be more than a buzzword – the CE must be just by design.

Increasing resource scarcity and what has been called “the end of cheap nature” are prompting policymakers and scholars to foster more circular economies to reduce waste and lengthen the lifespan of material goods. Our essay critically examines the political and economic relationships between urban and rural geographies in the context of secondhand economies. Practices of bartering, swapping, selling, and repairing used goods have long been important to rural people and places, but the increasing commodification of discards risks upending rural livelihoods and ways of being as goods move toward urban centers. We explore the relationship between rural and urban reuse economies and suggest how future scholars of rural North America might contribute to strengthening and supporting localized reuse practices.

The concept of the circular economy has taken off, gaining momentum along with concerns about resource depletion, waste, and the impending ‘end of cheap nature’ (Moore 2014). Environmentalists and industrialists alike have promoted the benefits of reuse as a means toward improved efficiency and reduced resource pressure. Some have called for a new ‘culture of reuse’ (Botsman and Rogers 2010; Stokes et al. 2014). It is in this context that we explore repair, resale, and reuse as practices with deep historical precedent and contemporary continuity. Are there lessons to be learned from places that are already home to circular economies and strong cultures of reuse? And are there dangers inherent in a stronger, more formalized reuse sector? This paper draws on an historical and ethnographic analysis of vibrant reuse practices in the rural northeastern state of Maine. While there is a popular tendency to explain Maine’s persistent reuse practices as a response to economic and geographic marginality, our empirical observations suggest that these explanations do not adequately capture the complexity of reuse markets, discount the power of human agency and sense of place, and preclude important lessons for reuse policy in other contexts. Insights from Maine suggest that any effort to promote reuse would benefit from looking beyond purely economic rationales to attend to matters of place, sociality, and market relationality.