Trampas de la economía circular

The Circular Economy, as it is most often picked up in urban policy, government and scientific debate, is often presented as transformative, but it is reformist at best. In fact, the promise of the Circular Economy is so seductive exactly because it promises to reduce environmental impacts without challenging the cultural and institutional foundations of the economy as we know it. In this brief article, I unveil the environmental, socio-economic and managerial pitfalls of the Circular Economy, and conclude by suggesting three areas of intervention to address them: seriously combating illicit and illegal activity in key sectors and in terms of labor practices, giving more prominence to the value retention principles of reject, reduce and reuse, and engaging in a serious and democratic policy debate about capitalist notions of prosperity, development and social progress that are taken for granted in the dominant discourse on the Circular Economy.