Abstract
This article draws on comparative ethnographic research on plastic consumption, (re)use, and disposal in households and collective spaces in Cambridge (England) and Montevideo (Uruguay). Focusing on practices of re-use by individuals and collectives, it argues that these constitute forms of ‘actually existing circularity’ that provide an alternative to circular economy schemes premised on retained corporate ownership. In the context of discussions of the circular economy that are often limited to the macro policy level, this article thus provides a degree of granularity and a focus on everyday practices. Connecting with debates around materiality, it argues both that we must play close attention to the synthetic materials that surround us in everyday life, and that a focus on materials can help demonstrate the way that commodity status can be undone through projects of collective, inventive re-use that spill out beyond the household. Finally, it points to the potentially disenfranchising elements of dominant business-friendly circular economy visions and the way that these might disrupt complex materials pathways and cultures of re-use and repair rather than straight-forward linear economies.
Highlights
In the workshop of one of Montevideo’s leading Afro-Uruguayan candombe carnival troupes, the comparsa La Ciudad Vieja (Old Town), drummers warm their drums by an open fire, dancers squeeze on their glittery costumes confected in the workshop by director Daniela, and Ramón orders the group’s flag-bearers to take out the huge pieces of cloth and sacudir las banderas (‘shake the flags’)
The capacity to transform plastic may be limited at a domestic level, but this paper has suggested that we need not ourselves be limited by a household/industrial division that occludes messy, collective spaces, such as emergent repair cafes and carnival craft workshops
Households are extremely porous with regard to plastic, featuring continual inflows and outflows of plastic gifts, while many instances of plastic consumption, repair, and re-use occur outside of the home altogether
Summary
In the workshop of one of Montevideo’s leading Afro-Uruguayan candombe carnival troupes, the comparsa La Ciudad Vieja (Old Town), drummers warm their drums by an open fire, dancers squeeze on their glittery costumes confected in the workshop by director Daniela, and Ramón orders the group’s flag-bearers to take out the huge pieces of cloth and sacudir las banderas (‘shake the flags’). Collective repair spaces allow people like Clara, who subsists on a low income and whose time is largely taken up with family and church responsibilities, to avoid unnecessary expenditure and reduce her ‘plastic footprint’ in ways that complement her domestic re-use of transparent packaging containers and recycled craft activities. They highlight how the limitations of the household, both as a unit of analysis and as an actor engaged in plastic activism, might be overcome through collective community initiatives located firmly in the public sphere. In one of the more innovative collaborations, Cambridge Food Cycle were asked to provide 200 vegetable burgers made from food waste. Through such initiatives, the kind of re-use and make-do craft that has traditionally characterised the creation of such carnival staples as floats and costumes has come to be accompanied by more explicit circular economy schemes
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