Strange loops and circular economies

Abstract

The most widely promoted exemplars of the circular economy tend to reflect a neoliberal socio-climatic imaginary in which sustainability performance and financial performance go hand-in-hand. Reflecting on the case of Kalundborg Symbiosis in Denmark, this essay borrows Hofstadter’s notion of the ‘strange loop’ to think about the relationship between the radical potential of circularity vis-à-vis the conservative, business-friendly practices of the circular economy. It argues that corporations have a vested interested in maintaining the strange, appropriative loopiness of the circular economy and suggests that the way to break out of this loop is to attend explicitly to the social, political, and ecological contexts in which circularity is conceptualized and enacted, rather than the narrower, dominant focus on its technical and financial dimensions.