Circular additions to linear systems? Exploring Norwegian households' engagement with circularity in everyday life

The circular economy (CE) has gained a prominent position in the broader literature, discourse, and policy arenas concerned with sustainable production and consumption. With roots in industrial ecology, the goal of CE is to shift away from linear ‘take-make-waste’ systems towards a regenerative system where resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakage are minimised by slowing, closing, and narrowing material and energy loops, achieved through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling. Household consumption plays a central role in a shift towards the CE, but the complexities of consumption in everyday life are often overlooked in CE research. This article employs a practice theoretical lens to analyse the ways in which circularity is integrated into everyday life, for what purposes and with what effects. The data material consists of qualitative interviews with residents, and municipal and voluntary actors in Asker, Norway. We find that circularity was integrated by means of excitement and mastery, practical solutions, or financial savings on particular occasions, but was not necessarily considered a significant contributor to sustainability, nor did it replace linear forms of consumption. Households carved out space for circularity that largely left spatial or temporal rhythms of everyday life, established social norms, relations, or embodied knowledge unchallenged. Rather, circularity was integrated to maintain, rationalize, or simplify existing practices while upholding the throughput of household goods and resources, or pursue goals that had little to do with reduced resource use, representing circular additions to existing linear systems.