Eickhoff, H. The appeal of the circular economy revisited: on track for transformative change or enabler of moral licensing?. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11, 301 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02815-x
Eickhoff, H. The appeal of the circular economy revisited: on track for transformative change or enabler of moral licensing?. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11, 301 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02815-x
Eickhoff, H. The appeal of the circular economy revisited: on track for transformative change or enabler of moral licensing?. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11, 301 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02815-x
Eickhoff, H. The appeal of the circular economy revisited: on track for transformative change or enabler of moral licensing?. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11, 301 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02815-x
Abstract
The concept of an economy that is circular and without the need for material or energy input has an irresistible appeal to those who have recognized that planetary boundaries exist and that resources are not unlimited. Thus, in the public discourse its narrative outperforms other lines of arguments when it comes to keeping radical critics of destructive extractivism and the growth imperative in check and averting the uptake of diverging opinions by larger segments of the population and government bodies. Moreover, the myth of a circular economy has the additional benefit that it can win over parts of the environmental movement that dread radical and transformative change, particularly in the urban milieus of a middle-class that enjoys the privileges of the current social order.
In this paper I argue that the circular economy narrative tends to hinder the necessary systemic transformation while entailing a wide range of specific measures that deserve to be recognized for their merit.
Keywords
circular economy; planetary boundaries; green lifestyle; moral licensing
Subject
Social Sciences, Sociology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
