Assembling the Loop: Interpreting the marketisation of New Zealand's emerging circular economy

Abstract

Various bodies of literature argues that established models of economic development are stimulating unsustainable patterns of environmental degradation and economic development, therefore we need operationalise new ways of doing economy. In this context, this research examines New Zealand's emerging interest in circular economies (CE), a political discourse that presents a source of new, socially responsible, business opportunities, that can be realised through experimenting in niche markets. The thesis documents a set of diverse CE experiments and the market making practices in play to examine how markets are designed, shaped and reshaped to enhance resource utilisation and reduce waste. Targeted together, it is contended that new generations of environmentally focused social entrepreneurs are a part of a political project to remake New Zealand's economy. CE are creating new sets of investors, consumers and supply chain relations and these actors are using entrepreneurialism to live their ethics. New links are being (re)made between contexts, relationships and landscapes through the search for new forms of value. This approach to thinking and doing economy differently is making significant ethical and political contributions to promote sustainable economic development. However, as a pathway to better futures, CE faces a set of challenges, most notably to find ways of rebalancing profitability and environmental ethics and to cultivate the new subjects of a CE (businesses, regulators, consumers, and publics). That is, CE principles and practices are far from firmly embedded in societies dominated by the logics of linear economies. CE are hard to achieve, their assembly requires collective and cooperative engagement at a range of hierarchical levels. Prevailing social constructions of how economy 'should' operate limit actor participation and is a systematic deterrent. Moving beyond these societal barriers requires a cooperative, long-term focus to foster new ideologies, innovations and relations to reshape well-established, consumption patterns and norms. Regardless, New Zealand's CE is an unfolding economy. It offers fertile ground for rethinking and aspiring economic change, even if a CE driven national development is far from fully realised. The studied experiments represent sites and moments of change towards the sustainability of NZ's economy and environment. In examining these cases, this thesis posits that there is a wider field of financially profitable ethical practice to be captured and suggests a set of opportunities that might be leveraged to accelerate transition.