Freecycling Markets as Sustainable Materialist Movements?

Abstract

This paper seeks to redress the over-emphasis on state-driven circular policies in public and academic discourses by attending to two physical community-based freecycling markets at the emerging frontiers of circular waste/resource management in Singapore. Freecycling markets that close short reuse loops are a counterpoint to policies that close long recycling loops. Drawing primarily on empirical data from ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that freecycling markets exemplify a sustainable materialist movement concerned about the sustainability of material resources vis-à-vis the closing/shortening of material circularity loops. This is achieved through the reconfiguration of (a) material flows and (b) material relations. The redirection of unwanted but reusable household objects away from the incinerator and towards potential reusers animates a shift from a linear to circular material flow. We contend that this redirection of material resources for reuse is augmented by rescue and recirculation, which are relatively neglected within the scholarship on circular R-behaviours. Additionally, freecycling markets seek to transform material relations by encouraging care and stewardship, instead of use and disposal. Crucially, we highlight how freecycling markets may be plagued with material constraints that render them not-so-sustainable-and-scalable, thereby shedding light on the practical limits of sustainable materialist action. Taken together, this paper extends the scholarship on circular economies by bringing work on sustainable materialism into a productive dialogue with that on circular activisms and R-behaviours.