When Circularity Misses the Point: What the Panipat Story Tells Us About Value and Justice

This week, The Guardian reported from Panipat, India — a city known as the castoff capital of the world. Every day, thousands of tonnes of unwanted clothes from the UK and Europe arrive there to be shredded and spun back into new yarn.

It sounds like circular economy in action. Waste diverted from landfill, materials given a second life. But look closer and the story changes: workers inhaling textile dust, earning barely enough to survive, while the brands and systems that created the waste remain comfortably distant from the consequences.

This is the paradox of circularity without justice — value extracted twice: once when clothes are made, and again when they’re discarded.

When the Loop Isn’t Local

If the same materials were repaired, repurposed, or recycled close to where they were used, the environmental and social benefits could stay within that community — reducing transport emissions, supporting local jobs, and helping people see waste as a resource. But when waste is shipped thousands of miles away, it takes opportunity and accountability with it. Circularity becomes a trade, not a transformation. And yet, it’s not as simple as saying “keep it local.” The people in Panipat depend on this work. The challenge isn’t to cut them out of the system — it’s to build better systems: ones that value their skills, improve conditions, and move them up the ladder from waste processing to material innovation and regenerative design.

A Missed Step in the Circular Economy

Circularity was never meant to be about simply finding new ways to process our waste. It’s about rethinking value — designing systems that waste less and give more.

Right now, that global loop is broken.

• The North consumes and discards.

• The South absorbs and processes.

• The value — financial, social, and environmental — rarely flows back.

What a More Holistic Circular Economy Could Look Like

A truly circular (and just) system would:

• Encourage local reuse and repair — materials stay useful where they were created.

• Invest in safe, well-paid work in recycling hubs like Panipat, building capability in higher-value material innovation.

• Share the economic benefits of circularity more equitably, not just the waste.

• Recognise the systemic role of circular jobs 

  — work that fulfils genuine market needs, from local repair and remanufacturing to global materials innovation. These are the jobs that build resilience and make the circular economy real.

  
  

Because circularity without people at the centre isn’t circular — it’s extractive in another form.