Organizing Shit: Flows and Leaks in the Circular Economy

• In Event: Greening Infrastructure Studies

Abstract

The figure of the circular economy is emerging as an appealing pathway towards achieving a sustainable society. Promising both economic and environmental gain, it is promoted by political bodies as well as business companies. In the circular economy trash turns into economic and cultural valuables.

This contribution reports from an ongoing project examining the transformations of biological waste in urban contexts based on an ethnography of waste water management in Swedish municipalities. Based on interviews and site observations, we explore the urban metabolism of waste water. Through the approach of “trash-tracing”, we follow the transformation of values, from "shit" flushed down the toilet to its end-up market commodities: biogas and fertilizer. Following the human and non-human “waste workers”, we examine whether and where there are the leaks in this supposed circular economy and how economic and environmental value is added to and or removed from the transformed sewage materials.

Several conflicts appear as we follow the transformative flow. These include conflicts between public and private logics; between environmental and economic gains; and between nature and society. Concurrent valuation processes are central in these conflicts with stakes attached to aspects such the branding of the municipality as a sustainable city, employing new waste workers such as microbes, and final products having less economic and environmental value than envisioned. We discuss the inherent conflicts of the circular economy, and suiting methodologies, through the exploration of urban waste water infrastructures.

Authors

• Tora Holmberg, Uppsala University

• Malin Ideland, Malmö University

• Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS)