Community-Oriented Reuse Organisations: A Strong Sustainability Articulation of the Circular Economy

As circular economy (CE) strategies become mainstream in policy and business practice, concerns have emerged about their narrow focus on techno-economic efficiency - i.e. part of "weak sustainability" efforts. In response, a growing number of grassroots, public, and hybrid initiatives have taken root at the local level, bridging product and material recovery with social inclusion, education, and ecological care - within what is being called "strong sustainability". This paper conceptualises these actors as Community-Oriented Reuse Organisations (COREOs): organisations that operate at the convergence of CE and strong sustainability. We conduct a scoping review of academic and grey literature to identify and synthesise empirical evidence about such organisations. From this, we introduce six narrative archetypes that reflect self-identifications found through coding the sources (e.g., reuse shops, repair cafés, and makerspaces). We then propose the COREOs model, comprising four interrelated dimensions: resource stewardship, social capital, physical infrastructure, and organisational permanence, supported by four elementary theoretical propositions. A classification framework is developed to map organisational profiles based on structural and functional characteristics, which we use to derive illustrative organisational types. This theory-building work clarifies the overlooked yet pivotal role that community-oriented reuse organisations can play in circular transitions, providing a conceptual foundation to inform future research, policy, and practice at the intersection of CE and strong sustainability.