“Can’t You Count What Really Connects Us?” A Situated Qualitative Counter-Accounting for Social Ties in a Local Circular Economy for Organic Waste

This article addresses a major challenge in circular economy accounting: assessing the social dimension, particularly social ties, which are often immaterial and difficult to capture. It examines a case study of how a local project managing organic waste and unsold goods fosters social ties in a priority urban neighborhood in France, and how these dynamics can be apprehended through an alternative qualitative accounting approach. The study draws on an ethnographic case of the MatOrGa project, combining participant observation, semi-structured interviews, discourse grounded analysis, and actor and flow mapping. Situated within counter-accounting and critical accounting, the research emphasizes social ties that extend beyond purely economic logic, spanning social, ecological, and economic dimensions. The new concept of counter-accounting utterances is introduced to describe empirical accounts that make visible practices, relationships, and social effects often overlooked in conventional accounting and sustainability reporting. The study shows how ethnography can function as a form of counter-accounting, producing qualitative representations of social impact that resist standardization. The findings advance social and sustainability accounting by offering a situated and reflexive approach to assessing the social impact of circular economy initiatives, while also opening the way for context-sensitive non-financial reporting.