Overview
What if the circular economy reduces environmental impacts while creating new social challenges elsewhere?
The circular economy is widely promoted as a key strategy to reduce resource use and environmental pressures by extending product lifetimes, enabling reuse, and closing material loops. However, early evidence points to an overlooked dimension. Many circular activities—such as repair, dismantling, and manual recycling—are labor-intensive and often outsourced to regions or sectors with limited labor protection. At the same time, new waste streams are increasingly exported to areas that are neither used to handling them nor equipped with the necessary infrastructure and regulatory capacity.
This exploratory pilot study investigates these blind spots. It reconstructs the underlying problem structure and identifies the key actor groups involved along outsourced circular process chains. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between **HSLU Technik & Architektur** and **HSLU Soziale Arbeit**, combining perspectives on technological systems, global value chains, and social impacts.
