Abstract
The paper makes two contributions to the advancement of the ‘circular economy’ as a blueprint for a more sustainable society. The first is to highlight the importance of understanding the dynamics of consumption and waste in the domestic sphere. The second is to illustrate two ways in which using insights from socio-technical literature on sustainable consumption, in combination with the sociology of food, could contribute to redressing this shortfall. This includes understanding why people use or consume particular goods or services, and how this might be altered; and what drives the production of waste and the adoption of strategies for its reduction by consumers. We mobilise insights from a socio-technical perspective on consumption, which highlights the importance of everyday interactions between routine activities, mundane technologies and cultural meanings in (re)producing patterns of consumption. These insights are illustrated with reference to domestic food provisioning, using empirical data generated through twenty semi-structured interviews with consumers in relation to meat consumption and thriftiness. Two suggestions for the development of the ‘circular economy’ to better take account of consumption within the domestic sphere are made. The first is a shift from imagining consumers as ‘users’ of particular products or services, to conceptualisation as ‘doers’ of everyday activities. The second is a broadening of the principle of ‘eco-effectiveness’ to take account for the social value of consumption.
Highlights
The ‘circular economy’ (CE) is presented as a more environmentally sustainable alternative to the existing ‘linear’ economy, in which materials flow in one direction—through production, use, and, to be discarded
This work reviews and assesses current potential for CE strategies, and makes suggestions for how consumers might be incorporated. While it succeeds in taking the first steps in moving beyond the production-biased approach to the food system, by highlighting the importance of domestic consumption in a transition to a circular economy, it is our proposition that the strategies suggested reflect the dominant, implicit conception of ‘consumption’ in accounts of CE
These insights suggest the need to move beyond the conception that what is consumed, or how reuse and recycling takes place can be significantly altered through the provision of new business models and accompanying marketing to consumers, as often implied in accounts of the circular economy (e.g., [1,3,4])
Summary
The ‘circular economy’ (CE) is presented as a more environmentally sustainable alternative to the existing ‘linear’ economy, in which materials flow in one direction—through production, use, and, to be discarded. This work reviews and assesses current potential for CE strategies, and makes suggestions for how consumers might be incorporated While it succeeds in taking the first steps in moving beyond the production-biased approach to the food system, by highlighting the importance of domestic consumption in a transition to a circular economy, it is our proposition that the strategies suggested reflect the dominant, implicit (and flawed) conception of ‘consumption’ in accounts of CE. While considerable variety exists across this broad school of thought, proponents share an emphasis on the importance of routine, often mundane, habitual nature of consumption, which is shaped in significant ways by existing material infrastructures, shared cultural meanings, established normative expectations and the temporal rhythms of everyday life We adopt this orientation and illustrate how this generates alternative insights into the processes of reduction, reuse and recycling, through discussion of three examples: The reduction of meat consumption, the reuse of leftovers and the ridding of surplus food. In line with Bacchi’s [18] argument that policy gives shape to problems rather than directly addressing them, we suggest this reconceptualization is an important step in promoting ‘circularity’ and the changes in domestic consumption that will accompany it
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