Circularity

Circularity research at ENP contributes to understanding circularity transformations with a focus on how circular social practices emerge and scale up, and with what social and environmental implications.

Transitioning from our current take-make-waste system towards a truly circular one is an urgent challenge of our times. Our research explores circular transformation at the scales of situated practices and interconnected production – consumption systems to study the socio-material and governance dynamics that facilitate or constrain change.

We contribute to different fields of circularity research at different scales of analysis: 1) circular change at the scale of situated consumption and production practices, from sharing and repairing in everyday urban life, to hospitals, workplaces and neighbourhoods, 2) governance research exploring barriers and enablers to circular systems change, from sanitation to agriculture, and ocean plastics to plastic packaging, and 3) nexus perspectives that look at how circular food, nutrients, water, and chemicals interact. We achieve this through interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary co-creative research approaches that bridge science and society and seek to stimulate real change.