Mechanisms of circularity: How epistemic, financial and material flows construct new waste geographies

Circular Economy (CE) initiatives originate predominantly in the Global North, yet their material, epistemic, and financial effects increasingly manifest in Global South contexts. Using Dutch–Kenya waste relations as a critical case study, this article examines how CE interventions transform waste materials into a marketized commodity through three interconnected variables: an epistemic variable, reframing waste and circularity through market-oriented knowledge systems; a financial, channelling investment towards formalized circular infrastructure that excludes informal and community-based actors; and a material variable, establishing new waste geographies that concentrate processing activity in the Global South. Kenya's dual position as a destination for Dutch waste exports and a recipient of Dutch CE development funding, makes it a relevant site for observing how these variables operate and interact. Drawing on interviews with Dutch and Kenyan government, donor, and civil society actors, the article argues that CE interventions restructure the governance of existing waste markets not through Dutch influence alone, but through negotiated convergence between Dutch donor priorities and the Kenyan state's own regulatory capacity constraints and economic interests. This restructuring concentrates control over the terms of participation among formal, internationally connected, and resourced actors, while progressively marginalizing informal workers who have long managed waste through community-based practices. Through an environmental justice lens drawing on Schlosberg's (2007) tripartite framework of distribution, recognition, and participation, the article demonstrates that the critical question is not only who governs the new waste geographies and on whose terms material recovery proceeds, but how donor and recipient-state interests jointly produce the exclusion of informal actors from that governance. The article contributes an integrated analytical framework for studying the shift from conventional waste trade to circular trade in North–South relations, and positions this contribution within political ecology and critical CE scholarship.