Why the Circular Economy Became Sustainability’s Most Powerful Buzzword

The circular economy has become one of the most visible ideas in modern sustainability discourse, invoked by governments drafting legislation, corporations redesigning supply chains, and academics publishing thousands of papers each year. Yet a striking puzzle sits at the heart of its success: global circularity, according to the most recent Circularity Gap Report, remains below ten percent and is actually declining, even as the concept itself climbs to ever greater heights of political and commercial popularity. A new analysis published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology by Julian Kirchherr of Roskilde University and Utrecht University and Kris Hartley of Arizona State University argues that this paradox is best explained by treating the circular economy not primarily as a technical framework, but as what social scientists call a ‘magic concept’—a term whose flexibility and broad appeal, rather than its measurable results, explain its extraordinary staying power.

The term ‘magic concept’ was introduced by scholars Christopher Pollitt and Peter Hupe in 2011 to describe ideas that dominate policy debates not because they solve problems, but because of how they function in language. Importantly, the word ‘magic’ here refers to discursive flexibility rather than deception or superstition. Pollitt and Hupe identified four defining characteristics of such concepts: a high degree of abstraction, a strongly positive normative charge, a seeming ability to dissolve previous dilemmas and binary oppositions, and mobility across domains. In the language adopted by Kirchherr and Hartley, these become broadness and discursive hybridity, normative attractiveness, implication of consensus, and universal marketability. Magic concepts typically emerge by overtaking older or anachronistic ideas, and they thrive during periods of rapid change when legacy frameworks seem inadequate and novelty carries its own mandate. Their core ingredients, however, are rarely new—collaboration, trust, and experimentation have all been repackaged into magic concepts at various moments.

The circular economy’s own history illustrates this pattern. While the practices it describes—reusing, recycling, and recovering materials—are arguably as old as material use itself, the modern concept traces its intellectual lineage to Kenneth Boulding’s 1966 notion of ‘Spaceship Earth,’ which framed the planet as a closed system with finite resources. Other scholars trace the term’s formal origins to China in the 1990s, where it was embedded in national policy before spreading globally. The concept’s academic breakthrough, however, owes much to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, whose influential reports from 2013 onward gave the idea both intellectual structure and celebrity endorsement. The foundation’s creation was motivated in part by the founder’s experience sailing solo around the world, where resource finitude and the necessity of circulation became matters of survival rather than abstraction. By 2017, research had moved beyond incidental case studies toward conceptual and systemic questions, and the circular economy is now recognized as a distinct, maturing field with shared concepts, policy commitments, and a growing epistemic community.

So how does the circular economy measure up against the four criteria of a magic concept? The first is broadness. A comprehensive analysis of 221 definitions by Kirchherr and colleagues yielded a meta-definition describing a regenerative economic system requiring a paradigm shift to replace the ‘end of life’ concept with reducing, reusing, recycling, and recovering materials across supply chains. But the sheer variety of those 221 definitions is itself the point. ‘Going circular’ can mean anything from a single firm adopting one recycling activity to a fundamental overhaul of entire economic systems. Research by D’Angelo and colleagues quantifies this breadth by tallying the diverse activities firms undertake under the circular banner, from reduced water and energy use to product redesign. This ambiguity is not a flaw from the magic concept perspective—it is the engine of the concept’s survival, allowing it to serve as both a detailed operational blueprint and a vague narrative flexible enough to support high-level political objectives.

The second characteristic, normative attractiveness, is equally evident. Early advocacy, particularly by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, promised that circularity could reconcile economic growth with environmental health—a proposition with obvious moral and political appeal. Some scholars have gone further, framing the circular economy as a societal ‘ought’ that retains validity even when violated in practice. Yet the promises remain contested. Researchers have documented the phenomenon of ‘circular rebound,’ whereby efficiency gains from circularity indirectly undermine sustainability by stimulating additional consumption. Others, such as Figge and colleagues, insist the concept should refer strictly and only to material flows, resisting the expansion of its normative ambitions. The tension between these positions reflects how collective optimism about an emergent idea tends to graft moral expectations onto it, transforming a technical framework into a quasi-ethical project.

The third characteristic, implication of consensus, may be the most consequential. Magic concepts appear to stand above ideology, presenting themselves as neutral and plausibly undebatable. The circular economy has largely achieved this status: it is embraced by businesses, policymakers, and many scholars as a unifying construct that dissolves the traditional conflict between economic and environmental interests. Ziegler and colleagues observe that the dominant conception presents the circular transition as a politically neutral, technology-driven process of efficiency improvement. But critical scholars challenge this neutrality. Researchers aligned with degrowth and political economy perspectives argue that the circular economy is a politically motivated agenda driven by neoliberal ideology and business interests, protecting the status quo economic system while delivering only incremental or performative progress. Giampietro and Funtowicz put it starkly, describing the term’s success as an example of socially constructed ignorance in which folk tales of zero emissions and rapid decarbonization depoliticize the sustainability debate. Consensus, in this reading, is manufactured through multilateral institutionalization—when circularity is folded into global policy agendas, it borrows their scientific and political credibility and marginalizes alternative framings.

The fourth characteristic, universal marketability, explains the concept’s reach across otherwise disconnected audiences. For businesses, circularity offers profitability through streamlined production, waste mitigation, and sustainability credentials recognized by certification bodies. For governments, it provides rhetorical advantages, allowing states to present themselves as simultaneously pro-business and pro-environment on an issue—waste management—that touches public infrastructure. In an era of trade retrenchment and geopolitical tension, circularity has acquired an additional selling point: resource autonomy and sovereignty through reduced dependence on global supply chains. For academics, the concept has become a thematic compass spanning industrial engineering, public policy, futures studies, and business management. Consumers, by contrast, remain the least engaged stakeholder group, largely because circular transition makes relatively low demands on them beyond end-of-life recycling and the higher prices of circular products—a tentative claim the authors note requires empirical validation across sectors and regions.

Kirchherr and Hartley argue that the magic concept perspective outperforms two rival analytical frameworks often applied to the circular economy. The first is the ‘umbrella construct,’ defined by Hirsch and Levin as a broad concept used loosely to encompass diverse phenomena. While the circular economy certainly functions this way—spanning the ‘9R’ framework from recovering and recycling to rethinking and refusing—breadth alone does not explain its mobilizing power. The second is the ‘boundary object,’ a concept flexible enough to adapt to different social worlds yet structured enough to serve as a common reference point for collaboration. The circular economy operates as a boundary object in fields as varied as water management, urban planning, and the emerging notion of a ‘circular society.’ But neither framework captures the normative charge, the implied consensus, or the marketability that make the concept ‘sticky.’ As the authors put it, any magic concept is likely also a boundary object, but not every boundary object is a magic concept.

The practical implications cut in two directions. For advocates, the four dimensions offer a survival strategy: embrace broadness by welcoming both allied and opposing concepts, sustain normative attractiveness by pairing moral appeal with practical benefits, strengthen consensus through credible evidence rather than politically selected metrics, and promote universal marketability by framing circularity in terms that resonate from the firm to the city to the global economy. Yet the authors also warn that magic concepts can lose their magic. The thirst for conceptual novelty—driven partly by academics and consultancies peddling fresh frameworks, and partly by businesses and governments eager to appear innovative—means that today’s buzzword can be supplanted by tomorrow’s, much as ‘smart cities’ once swept through urban policy debates. If the circular economy loses prominence without a conceptual heir, the broader sustainability discourse could fragment further. Its narrative fate, the authors suggest, is arguably tied to that of sustainability itself: if commitment to sustainability principles wavers, the circular economy’s legitimacy will likely be undermined with it.

Perhaps the most sobering conclusion is a call for neutrality amid the optimism. Pollitt and Hupe observed that magic concepts excite discussion, but when the show is over many hard choices remain. The circular economy is, in the end, a label—a powerful one for political and corporate messaging, but not a guarantee of outcomes. The authors argue that production practices classifiable as circular should be supported insofar as they demonstrably advance broader societal goals, regardless of whether they fit the fleeting expectations of those promoting a particular buzzword. The tangible practices attributed to circularity, they contend, should be iteratively and independently tested for their impact and redesigned accordingly. Whether the concept now evolves toward greater flexibility and universality, or toward tighter definitions and stricter inclusion criteria—as framing concepts often do over time—remains an open question. What is clear is that its magic, however real, was never a substitute for the hard work of measuring whether circular practices actually deliver the sustainable future they promise.

Subject of Research: Discursive analysis of the circular economy as a 'magic concept' in sustainability policy and scholarship

Article Title: Circular economy as a magic concept: the rise and (possible) fall of a sustainability buzzword

Article References: Kirchherr, J., & Hartley, K. (2026). Circular economy as a magic concept: the rise and (possible) fall of a sustainability buzzword. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 30(4), 1715-1726. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44498-026-00116-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44498-026-00116-x

Keywords: circular economy, magic concept, sustainability, discourse analysis, pollitt and hupe, ellen macArthur foundation, waste management, policy narratives, degrowth, industrial ecology, circularity gap, buzzwords