Circling the economy: Resource-making and marketization in EU electronic waste policy

This article investigates the reinvention of electrical and electronic waste as a resource in the context of the EU market economy. It argues that the European regulatory framework is underpinned by a particular vision of 'circular economy' that both internalises e-waste within formal economic circuits and confines its exchange to the territory of the single market. Yet the boundaries of this economic regime continue to be highly permeable, as the terminus of two thirds of the products placed on the market remains unaccounted for, said to dissipate via various loopholes in waste collection and treatment. Based on analysis of the policy rationale and praxis, the article relates this failure to the fact that e-waste is identified in ambiguous terms as comprising both socio-ecological risk and economic value, or what is termed here the 'logic of hazard' and the 'logic of resource'. The making of resources from potentially hazardous materials hinges on the extent to which incremental quantities of end-of-life equipment can be translated into a uniform tradable good, the movements of which are documented, calculated and monitored through standard methods. The two logics are complementary insofar as they legitimise the spatial enclosure of e-waste trade, but they can also come into conflict, since the double identity of e-waste complicates the reframing of market boundaries and generates different objects of regulation. The case study advances geographical research on materials and 'marketization', enabling the materiality of e-waste to be conceptualised as both a product of and obstacle to the territorial b/ordering of the market.