Paper short abstract:

This paper compares circular economic practices at a household level in England and Uruguay. The paper charts the opportunities for participants in both fieldsites to minimise their use of plastic and plastic packaging, principally through consumption choices or re-use practices.

Paper long abstract:

This paper compares circular economic practices at a household level in Cambridge (England) and Montevideo (Uruguay). It draws on interviews and participant observation conducted with ten households in each site, where participants were asked to keep a diary of their patterns of consumption, use, re-use, and disposal of plastics. The paper charts the opportunities for participants in both fieldsites to minimise their use of plastic and plastic packaging, principally through consumption choices or re-use practices, as well as the availability of recycling infrastructures. Taking a materials-centred approach, it explores the affective and practical ties that link and detach people and plastic in everyday life, as well as the way that global imaginaries of environmental pollution are grounded by people in vastly different sites. At an analytical level, the paper compares 'actually existing circularity' - everyday activities that conserve materials, design out waste, and maintain natural systems - to new initiatives that are much more likely to be explicitly described in the language of the circular economy. The first, I argue, tend to involve informal, community-based activities, while the latter are more likely to be organised by formal private-public sector actors.