In the face of increasing resource insecurity, environmental degradation and climate change, more governments and businesses are now embracing the concept of the circular economy. This chapter presents some historical background to the concept, with particular attention paid to its assumed opposite, the âlinearâ or growth economy. While the origins of the circular economy concept are to be found in 1960s environmentalism, the chapter draws attention to the influence of the then ânewâ sciences of ecology and âcyberneticsâ in shaping the public environmental discourse of the period. It also draws attention to the background of the present linear economy in postwar policies that encouraged reconstruction and a social and economic democratisation across the West, including an expansion of mass-consumption. It emphasises the role of the 1960s counterculture in generating a popular reaction against this expansionary growth-based agenda, and its influence in shaping subsequent environmentalism, including the âmetabolicâ and ecological economic understanding of the environmental crisis that informs the concept of the circular economy. Reflecting upon this historical preamble, the chapter concludes that more attention should be paid to the economic, cultural and social contexts of consumption, now more clearly the main driver of our global environmental crisis. Without now engaging more directly with the âconsumption problemâ, the chapter argues, it seems unlikely that the goals of the circular economy can be met.
Introduction
According to the British charity, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the circular economy is a visionary model of an environmentally and socially sustainable economy that is ârestorative by designâ, aiming âto keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all timesâ (EMF, 2013; Webster, 2013). This model envisages a shift away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy, shared product-service systems and also towards a material flow of closed loops in all products, components and materials, not unlike that found in some high-value areas of recycling and remanufacturing today. Enticed by the profits and reduced environmental costs associated with such innovative circular strategies, in this vision manufacturers themselves will be encouraged to become involved in reusing materials and products, thus reducing energy and resource use, materials consumption, pollution and waste (Lacy & Rutqvist, 2015; Webster, 2013).
As promoted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the circular economy concept has been successful in engaging many large corporations and governments into taking the environmental consequences of todayâs growth economy more seriously. For example, the concept has transformed the once radical ideas of extended producer responsibility and environmental stewardship from external liabilities into potential business opportunities (Lacy & Rutqvist, 2015). The model has the distinct advantage of appealing not only to the bottom line of many large and generally risk-adverse companies but also to the policy choices faced by governments confronting the twin challenges of climate change and the social impacts of industrial transformation. Most importantly, the circular economy concept has helped reframe and give direction to the sustainability agendas of many corporations and governments, worried about the political and economic risks of seeming to slow growth in the name of the environment (Geissdoerfer, Savaget, Bocken, & Hultink, 2017; Hughes, 2017; Lakoff, 2010).
By tracing the history of the circular economy back to its genesis in the environmental conflicts of the 1960s, and particularly to the âcircularâ resource- and energy-focussed metaphor of âSpaceship Earthâ, attention is drawn here to the many ways in which the ideological conflicts of the past continue to shape todayâs debates about the environmental crisis and what should be done about it (Schor, 2010; Sabin, 2013). As in 1960s environmentalism, the circular economy concept has focussed on our systemic overconsumption of resources and energy, while neglecting the role of the global consumption of goods and services as in itself the main driver of this resource depletion, environmental degradation and climate change (Dauvergne, 2008; 2010). The chapter ends with a consideration of the role of design in shaping the continuing expansion and acceleration of consumption and argues that more directly addressing the role of design in the present linear economy could assist in furthering the goals of the circular economy.
Discovering âSpaceship Earthâ
The history of the circular economy concept is often traced back to postwar environmentalism (Deese, 2009; Rome, 2015; Winans, Kendall, & Deng, 2017), although its metaphorical reference to a circle of material flows and energy has been clearly influenced by the natural sciences, and especially biology and ecology, where the word âmetabolismâ had long been used as a way of talking about the dynamic interaction and interdependence observed between a living being and its immediate environment (Fischer-Kowalski, 1998). As several writers (e.g., Deese, 2009; Winans et al., 2017) have emphasised, the spaceship metaphor for a âcircularâ movement of material and energy flows seems to have first appeared in Kenneth Bouldingâs writings (1964, 1966), and was then quickly popularised, soon gaining a wide public currency (e.g., Fuller, 1969; Ward, 1966).
For Boulding (1966), contemporary economics was âcowboy economicsâ in its lack of engagement with the environment, since its measure of economic success was a one-way throughput of energy and materials, thus leading to the potential loss of natural resources or âstocksâ. This is perhaps one of the first enunciations of the âlinear economyâ that we have, and to this Boulding (1966) opposed a notion quite similar to that of the circular economy, a coming âspaceman economyâ, a model where throughput would be minimised, and the success of the economy would be measured by the ânature, extent, quality, and complexity of the total capital stock, including in this the state of the human bodies and mindsâ (p. 9, in Fischer-Kowalski, 1998, p. 70). Inputâoutput analyses of cities and of national economies, made familiar since this time through the developing discipline of environmental economics, soon followed this physical reformulation of the economy as a series of material and energy flows (Ayres & Kneese, 1969; Fischer-Kowalski, 1998; Râpke, 2004).
Like todayâs circular economy concept (see Andersen 2007; Pearce & Turner, 1989), the idea behind Bouldingâs formulation of âSpaceship Earthâ was an optimistic one, suggesting that humanity itself (as the âspacemanâ) had the capacity and ability through advancing scientific knowledge to responsibly pilot the spaceship of the earth, managing its supplies of water, food and fuel for the benefit of all of its many occupants (Deese, 2009; McQuaid, 2006). This metaphorâs widespread popular appeal to a more collaborative approach to the environment can be readily understood by referring to NASAâs famous photograph of the earth from space, reproduced on the cover of the first issue of the Whole Earth Catalog (Brand, 1968; Turner, 2006), and used to promote âEarth Dayâ from 1970 (Poole, 2008; Rome, 2013). This view was deliberately contrasted with the shortcomings of postwar modernist planning, development and industrial and military expansion. In this way, the idea of Spaceship Earth became a way to question the then common assumption that the earthâs resources were unlimited, and available for unending exploitation (Sabin, 2013; Turner, 2006; Schor, 2010).
The irony behind what became an emerging ideological struggle is that it was the prosperous and leisurely lifestyle of an educated middle class, enabled by this rapid development, that allowed more people to have the time and space to understand and interact with the natural environment, and especially the picturesque nature that they could now visit in their cars. As a number of historians have noted, the development of a greater popular interest in both preserving and more safely managing natural landscapes ironically parallelled the rise of the car, the suburb and the discovery (or rediscovery) of travel as middle-class leisure activity, especially towards the picturesque, whether in the woods, by the sea, or somewhere far away from the city (Harvey, 2012; Hays, 1987; Rome, 2013). The car, paradoxically, let more people see for themselves the unique beauties of their nationâs natural resources.
Thus, the environmental movement which developed in both America and Western Europe after the Second World War was closely tied in to rising living standards and began initially as a relatively conservative reaction to unrestrained development, but became in time increasingly linked to more radical calls for social, economic and political change (Formia, 2017). The perceived threats to the âgood lifeâ to be found in an increasing array of environmental dangers had been identified and publicised by a new generation of postwar ecologists and nature writers (Hays, 1987; Kirk, 2007; Turner, 2006). Higher standards of living, better scientific education and a wider understanding of the outside world through new electronic media, and especially the TV, led to more knowledge of the negative environmental impacts of industrialism and urban development. This led in turn to a more negative view of consumption and its environmental consequences, with âconsumerismâ becoming the d...
