essays
Thinking in Circles
by Kate O'Neill
January 28, 2019
Kate O'Neill is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
UC Berkeley – Plastics are central to the global Circular Economy. Their global environmental footprint is evident along their entire supply chain, from production through to disposal. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Report, The New Plastics Economy (2016) reshaped public debate about the production, use and discard of plastics. The European Union’s Circular Economy Action Plan puts plastics front and center. Plastics production sucks up the world’s petroleum. Plastic products are designed and manufactured to cater to our culture of disposability. And masses of discarded plastics now traverse the planet, lasting hundreds of years in the environment. A circular economy approach envisions how to shift plastics production away from fossil fuels, to create more durable (or compostable) alternative products from single use straws to components of industrial equipment, and to actually recycle, reprocess or reuse discarded plastics, a paradigm shift in global production.
However, from the point of view of someone who studies global politics for a living, there are some problems with this grand vision of a new, sustainable global economy. This short essay pulls together some of the questions I have been grappling with for a while, not least about the production, use and discard of plastics. It draws on other examples of political and environmental initiatives and transitions, local and global, that illustrate some of these concerns. Rather than being simply a critique, I hope this thought-piece sparks constructive discussion (and maybe even find some answers) about transitioning towards sustainability.
Why do I find the concept problematic? A few years ago, I was in the audience at a conference panel on the Circular Economy. One of the presenters, an ecological economist, had a slide that depicted the transition to a circular economy in this way (I am simplifying a little bit): take this straight line with the arrow at the end, and bend it round into a circle. Energy efficiency! No waste! Excitement in the room! Well, that was easy. The social scientist part of my brain flinched. Global economic transitions are never easy, never go to plan, and always hurt people, usually people who are poor and marginalized in the first place. I was thinking about waste pickers losing their livelihoods as landfills are capped to produce more climate friendly energy. Or about the incredibly toxic legacies of chemical and nuclear wastes that cannot be reintegrated back into production. And what about the politics? Whose interests would this transition serve? What made me uncomfortable was that it presented as a technocratic vision offered to the world by global elites. This impression has never entirely gone away, but I continue to grapple with the many conceptual layers of this thing called the Circular Economy.
What is the Circular Economy?
How is the circular economy defined? The concept of a Circular Economy has been part of the lexicon of regulatory policy and industrial ecology in Europe since at least the 1980s. It is the antithesis of the traditional “take, make, dispose” linear economy; advocates often compare it to natural ecosystems, which cycle all organisms back as nutrients. It emphasizes sustainable resource extraction, product design that maximizes use, and recovery and recycling used products and materials after they are discarded. The version presented at that panel was the very “macro” one: a set of principles that can steer the entire global economy towards sustainability, veering away from a disastrous plunge towards environmental and social disaster.
In practice, what does it mean to different constituencies? The Circular Economy is a policy platform, a social movement, and a set of design principles. For some it is a new ideology or paradigm, like Sustainable Development in the 1980s: a global panacea for waste, ecosystem loss, and greenhouse gas production. The Circular Economy has underpinned policy platforms and plans around the world. Its appeal lies in part because it is a set of coherent ideas – a framework – that can guides the actions of citizens, governments, corporations and international organizations now and into the future. The European Union’s sustainability platform is built around it. It is being integrated into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. One of the most prominent but perhaps unexpected places to find legislation that specifically states circular economy goals is China. However, and unsurprisingly, there is none by the US federal government.
It is also the basis for a whole social movement dedicated to cleaning up the planet now and in the future. The goal of creating a circular economy has inspired activist organizations around the world. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is probably its leading champion. Yet, the Circular Economy as a rallying cry has had less grassroots traction than its cousin, Zero Waste. Zero Waste groups have been most effective at local levels, including campuses, corporations, large event venues, and cities. What’s the difference between them? Zero Waste has a narrower (but potentially more attainable) goal of sending no waste (nothing that people throw away) to landfill, incineration or the ocean. This means diverting them to recycling, composting or other use. For example, UC Berkeley has a (rapidly approaching) goal of getting to Zero Waste by 2020, as do the cities of San Francisco, London (65 percent zero waste by 2030) and Kamikatsu, Japan (full zero waste by 2020). Kamikatsu is already known for requiring citizens to sort their trash into 34 categories!
What are problems with and controversies surrounding developing and implementing circular economies?
Can circles be local? Wastes, to take one example, are such a globally networked commodity these days that even with strict local standards, it is hard to stop their transfer to other parts of the world. This has long been the case with electronic wastes, and we now know it is the case with plastics. Food waste just by itself can be dealt with locally, through composting schemes in neighborhoods and communities, creating a local circle. However, it has, in the form of agricultural surplus, have a long history of being shipped to poor countries as food aid with all sorts of negative impacts on the recipients.
More, product supply chains, from cradle to grave, are global. Food, electronics, plastics travel thousands of miles from their point of production, from countries where regulations are hard to draw up, let alone enforce.
Why does this matter? Unfortunately, for circularity to work in the longer term, we need to worry about “leakage,” how restrictions in one part of the world simply lead polluters to move elsewhere. This has happened with forestry. For example, cities can make circularity work within their jurisdiction, but what about their ecological shadows? Jurisdictions cast ecological shadows when they get their resources – food, gasoline and manufactured goods for example – from elsewhere, or ship wastes beyond their boundaries. New York City’s “garbage barges,” which carry tons of trash from the city to many other states in the US and to Canada, often controversially.
Problems arise when exporters do not or cannot control what happens to such shipments. This became glaringly clear when China stopped plastic and paper scrap imports in 2018. If Zero Waste campaigns stop at the recycling bin, for example, with no tracking of what happens to contents once they have left the premises, there is little guarantee of recycling if most is shipped overseas.
Do we recycle or replace and reduce? This is a contentious one. On the one hand, the waste and recycling industry has a direct financial interest in building a circular economy through expanded recycling and reprocessing of municipal solid waste and other discarded stuff. It also can make the argument that we have large stockpiles of wastes stored in landfills (and homes) that should go through that system. On the other hand, others argue the focus needs to be on reducing waste production, and designing products to be more efficient (including energy efficiency), to be more durable, and made out of less harmful materials. This is where design comes in. Petroleum-based plastics are perhaps the main targets for elimination, leading to some of the more exciting innovations, including “mushroom” replacement for Styrofoam to steel straws. Biobased plastics are under development but scaled up production is a ways off.
Politically, however, this dispute pits powerful interests against each other. It also highlights some long-standing controversies. In many parts of the world, waste incineration (even with energy recovery) is not considered a way to achieve Zero Waste or renewable energy goals, especially given potential for environmental contamination. However, China’s push to create a circular economy depends on building up its incineration capacity, which it has done by leaps and bounds.
Why do global politics matter? From design or ecological perspectives, the circular economy might seem refreshingly apolitical. From some activist perspectives, “politics” (political controversies) are something to be barreled through to design and implement a global circular economy. These perspectives are somewhat akin to technocratic approaches to building markets: create them, let them run unimpeded, and they will work. This, again, is something of an oversimplification but it begs the question: what can disrupt circular economies out of left field and outside their purview? We have one answer: again, China’s disruption of scrap imports as much for matters of local and geopolitics than for the environment (perhaps more).
Perhaps a global agreement could help ward off some of these impacts, as countries agree to work collectively to solve a problem. There are many calls right now for some sort of global plastics agreement. At least 47 years of experience with global environmental governance suggests the answer is not so simple. Some issues, such as ozone layer depletion, have been dealt with successfully. Others, such as climate change, have not transcended conflicting interests. and to date, it seems that regulating plastics production, use and disposal or, more broadly, building towards a global circular economy may be closer to climate change than ozone depletion.
It also has to be recognized that most description, analysis, and implementation of the Circular Economy comes from the Global North. How does “circularity” look different from the perspective of the Global South? Norms of reuse and recycling remain stronger, but they are buckling under the weight of growing consumption, especially in urban areas, with attendant energy use and waste. New research explores what the circular economy and green development look like from a Southern perspective.
What about the transition to a “world without waste”? Last but not least, if we are – hypothetically – to achieve a global Circular Economy we need to think very carefully about what happens as that straight line is bent back into a circle. Large-scale global transitions are never easily achieved, even with wide support, as experience with Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism showed. And their negative impacts can be devastating to certain populations: women’s participation in the labor force and their economic autonomy declined steeply in the transition from state socialist to capitalist regimes. Some proposed solutions to climate change – such as large-scale climate engineering – may hold back global temperature rise but could have strong negative impacts on vulnerable populations. I have already noted impacts on waste pickers suddenly displaced from their livelihoods as landfills are capped to capture methane and use it for energy. And what about the most toxic of wastes, such as fly ash from incinerators and nuclear and chemical wastes? There is always some slippage in terms of what can be or what is recycled.
The Circular Economy has powerful appeal, as local policy and as a new global paradigm. It does, however, have issues that become particularly clear when using a global politics lens. Still, this also suggests learning from prior and broader experiences in the global realm. Reducing plastics worldwide is not simply a matter of local bans and creating political will. It requires engaging with some of the fundamentals of global politics and economics. Getting back to that conference panel, it was helpful to be pushed to think through the problems with leading conceptions of the Circular Economy, and now, to have the opportunity to work through them in constructive ways.
essays
My Friendship with Sakhi Gulestan
by Andrew Person
April 22, 2018
When I first introduced myself to Sakhi Gulestan, my interests were strictly commercial. My Army buddy Eric and I picked up some handmade Persian carpets in Afghanistan and I was looking around for a good market to sell them. On the way to work, I noticed Sakhi had middle-eastern looking carpets for sale at his stand above the Q Street exit of Dupont Circle.
Sakhi and I chatted a while about the carpet business. He said his carpets were from Afghanistan, and that he was from Afghanistan, so we began a longer conversation than I expected. Sakhi looked as if he had recently arrived from some remote part of Afghanistan. His weathered face and beard reminded me of many villagers I had met during my tour. After sharing a bit of our life story with each other and throwing out a few phrases I remembered in Pashto, I asked him whether he knew of a place where one could buy naswar, a type of tobacco I had seen in Afghanistan. He said he’d track some down for me. And so began our friendship.
From then on we spoke every time I walked by his little table on my way to and from work. Often we just exchanged a few words because I was in a rush. Sometimes we’d talk a little longer. As I passed by Sakhi’s stand I was always amazed at the variety of different goods he would sell. When it was cold, he’d have a huge stock of winter gloves, hats, and ear muffs. On a rainy day, he’d have tons of umbrellas. On Valentine’s Day, he had a huge pile of roses. Sakhi was a well known figure in the neighborhood and somebody would always be taking to him.
If Sakhi wasn’t tending his stand, he was feeding the birds. He’d collect old bread from nearby bread stores, put it in a bucket with some water and distribute the mush carefully at a row of nearby bushes. Sakhi was always in motion. Occasionally he’d be injured, he had a crutch he’d walk with sometimes—but nothing would slow him down. He was a bundle of energy that never seemed to tire.
After a few conversations I realized Sakhi was homeless. He lived in a truck parked near Dupont circle and paid the parking lot owner for the space he parked in. He kept all of his wares in the back of the truck and loaded and unloaded his stand each night.
On one afternoon in early November I invited Sakhi to join my girlfriend, her mom and a few other friends for Thanksgiving dinner at my girlfriend’s apartment. He accepted right away and said that he had lived in the United States for 20 years and that this was his first invitation to a Thanksgiving dinner. He asked for my phone number and the address so he could get in touch for the details.
Life was hectic then and Thanksgiving Day snuck up quickly. I hadn’t heard from Sakhi in about a week. As we put the finishing touches on Thanksgiving dinner I thought that he might not show up after all. Then, my phone rang. Sakhi said he was on his way but needed help finding the place. I told him I’d be waiting for him outside on 16th street to flag him down.
It was an incredibly windy day. I stood outside wondering what I had gotten everyone into. I had a good feeling about Sakhi but I didn’t know him that well. Then Sakhi walked around the corner. The wind was howling that day. He was fighting to push a huge cart full of black plastic bags down the street toward me. The gusts of wind almost knocked him and his cart over.
I helped Sakhi bring his things up the stairs into the apartment. After I made a round of introductions Sakhi got right to work. He started unloading his cart. He had stacks of bread, pies, boxes of chocolates, and spices. We couldn’t believe how much stuff he had with him and how much he wanted to leave with us. He even brought hats and other gifts for everyone. Then he walked right into the kitchen, turned the stove top on, burned some incense and said a blessing. He explained what he was doing but it was tough to understand. He spoke broken English and often mumbled.
We all sat down for dinner and Sakhi only ate a little bit. He was clearly watching what he ate very carefully and meanwhile was telling stories about what it was like to live on the streets of DC. He said the city –even in Dupont circle—was very dangerous at night and that the police wouldn’t help him much. Thieves had broken into his truck before and stolen some of the few things he owned. He said he was looking around for a place to live but that the security deposit was tough to come up with.
After about an hour Sakhi said he was ready to go. We were all sad to see him leave—and were surprised that he left far more food with us than he had eaten.
That winter, I grew amazed at how tough Sakhi was. Winters are cold in Washington--especially when you sleep in your truck. He assured me that he was warm enough at night. His only complaint was that it was a chore for him to find a place for his religious washings. He was also spending a lot of money on gas to keep him warm at night. Occasionally he’d mention that he had been looking at nearby apartments but didn’t seem particularly focused on it. It was something he’d mention in passing.
One day, Sakhi asked whether I had a day free to take him to a doctor’s visit. We decided on the upcoming Saturday. That day I pulled up to Dupont Circle and he was busy as always; loading things into his van, letting me know he’d be a couple more minutes, feeding the birds, etc. After a while another friend of his arrived and he introduced himself as Idris. He was dressed in designer clothes, his hair was slicked back and he chain smoked expensive cigarettes. Idris and I spoke a while as Sakhi continued with his chores. An hour after I arrived I wondered when the hell we were going to get going with this doctors visit!
Then Sakhi said that he had to take some vegetables out to some friends in Virginia and started loading bags of produce, plants, and other odds and ends into the back of my car. I never really had a chance to figure out what our plan was so I just went with it. After we helped Sakhi load my trunk and the back seats with all kinds of different stuff, we hit the road. Idris told me where to go.
Our first stop was an Afghan restaurant near Falls Church, Virginia. The restaurant owners greeted Sakhi as a VIP. Everyone stopped what they were doing—waiters, people in the back, everyone greeted Sakhi in a very respectful manner. They asked me, “how do you know Sakhi?” As if I had been let in on a very important secret. We ate lunch there and then drove to an Afghan market which could easily have been anywhere in central Asia. They sold tea, dried raisins, and other goods you wouldn’t find in the US. Once again, Sakhi received a VIP welcome from all those at the store. The manager came out of the back to speak with Sakhi for a while. I started to realize that Sakhi was regarded as a holy man by this Afghan community. His devotion to his faith and his simple way of life seemed to inspire a great deal of respect.
We stopped off at a couple more shops in the area and at that point I figured the hospital visit was off. Sakhi spoke at length with each of the shop owners and then at nightfall we decided it was time to head back to DC. We agreed that the hospital visit would wait until another day. I dropped Sakhi and Idris off back in Dupont Circle and drove home.
Later that week, I saw Sakhi a few times but was always in a hurry. Late in the week, I said hi but told him I was running late and couldn’t chat. He smiled and sent me off.
The next Saturday morning my phone rang. It was Idris. He said that he was sorry to have to tell me such terrible news, but that Sakhi was found dead in his truck the night before. He said he would meet me over in Dupont. I headed over immediately.
When I arrived in Dupont, Idris was speaking with a crying woman I’d never met before. She walked right up to me with teary eyes and said “are you Andrew? Sakhi said you were a good man. Thank you. I’m Sakhi’s wife.” Another young guy with a serious face introduced himself as Sakhi’s son. I had no idea that Sakhi had a family.
Everyone was discussing how we should deal with the situation. I was surprised to hear the police hadn’t been called yet. Sakhi was dead in the truck and we were discussing how to proceed. Sakhi’s wife was worried that once the authorities were involved that Sakhi wouldn’t receive the proper Islamic treatment. She was equally as concerned that if the nearby Mosque helped out that she would be excluded from his burial because she was a woman. So, she was a nervous wreck and naturally in shock from her loss.
As we were waiting for the police to arrive, Sakhi’s son had tracked down a group of Buddhist monks that were protesting nearby. They performed some sort of blessing near Sakhi’s truck and then left. It seemed an appropriate recognition that something huge had just happened.
Once the police arrived they questioned everyone and a cultural liaison started explaining how everything would be handled to Sakhi’s wife. An ambulance pulled up and Sakhi was placed into the back.
Idris and I started talking about how his funeral would be handled. We figured the Mosque would be the best place to start since they have funds to take care of such a situation. Idris and I drove over there to find out. Everyone at the mosque was heartbroken to hear of Sakhi’s death. Idris tracked down the right contact to arrange for Sakhi’s funeral.
On the way back from the Mosque Idris explained a bit of Sakhi’s family situation. The information came in bits and pieces…He had met his wife in Afghanistan and they both moved to the US over 20 years ago… his wife is American…They had kids… Sakhi and his wife lived separately…Sakhi had a strained relationship with his sons…etc.
After Sakhi had been taken away everyone was sort of wondering what should happen next. Sakhi’s wife and sons began clearing out his truck. Everyone agreed that we should make a little tribute to him the next day to let the community know that he had passed away.
The next morning we did just that. Idris brought a nice picture of Sakhi and we hooked it onto the tree near where Sakhi normally set up his stand. We had flowers on a table in front of the photo with a note that Sakhi had passed away. Sakhi’s son played the guitar and the rest of us just hung around. Hundreds of people stopped at his sign and you could see the expression on their face. They knew Sakhi and they were so sad to see he had died. Some left flowers at the table.
Sakhi’s funeral was set for a week later. Idris and I drove over together to a funeral home in DC and when we arrived, others had gathered to talk outside. When we went inside I saw Sakhi’s casket in the back and chairs set up nearby. Sakhi’s wife came storming down the stairs yelling that we should all get out and go home. She was escorted upstairs by some people I didn’t know and Sakhi’s sons urged us to stay.
The funeral was short. One of Sakhi’s sons said a few prayers and said some remarks about Sakhi. Everyone took turns passing a moment by his casket and before long we all said goodbye. When I shut my eyes to think about Sakhi I thought of a clutch of birds, fluttering out of a row of bushes into the sky.
Idris and I kept in touch for a while afterwards meeting up for dinner and hanging out on a few occasions—always talking about Sakhi. I really miss him. Idris has returned to Afghanistan and just called me and said he had big news for me. He said he’d email me. I can’t wait to find out what it is.