The Circular Economy and human needs satisfaction: Promising the radical, delivering the familiar

The Circular Economy (“CE”) is gaining momentum as an approach to addressing sustainability challenges. The CE is framed as a transformative model with economic, environmental and social benefits. Nevertheless, the degree of circularity in the global economy is low and critics highlight that current interpretations fall short in delivering promised results regarding the social dimension of sustainability. Instead economic growth is elevated above more radical socio-environmental transformation. This exploratory paper adopts a human needs approach, using Max-Neef’s Human-Scale Development proposal as an analytical lens to explore the contentious social dimension of the CE. The study revisits four seminal texts which are commonly referenced as influencing the CE’s conceptual development: The Blue Economy; Cradle to Cradle; Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development; and, The Performance Economy. These texts were analysed to identify satisfiers of human needs. This provides insight into how inclusive earlier visualisations were of encompassing human needs, and how these compare to the current CE direction. We argue that satisfiers of human needs are embedded, to differing extents, in some of the early CE depictions. Nevertheless, the CE concept has selectively developed, neglecting radical, human-centric transformational aspects and instead adheres to a familiar pathway of business-led economic growth.