The Just Circular Communities Collaborative (JC3) concept originated and has maintained roots in the communities of South Park and Georgetown. Situated in the Duwamish Manufacturing and Industrial Center (MIC) and adjacent to the Duwamish River, these communities experience a myriad of environmental injustices and health impacts, including the designation of the Lower Duwamish River as a Superfund Site in 2001. The communities here have responded with seeding, growing, and tending diverse social movements with a vision of justice for the land, water, and past, present, and future generations.

One such movement is led by Duwamish Valley Sustainability Association (DVSA), who works to build community power in health, education, and infrastructure via youth proposed and maintained sustainable projects. In 2021, DVSA received funding to pilot their localized anaerobic biodigester project in South Park that utilizes neighborhood food waste to generate biofuel and nutrient rich plant food. These outputs have potential to be fed back into the community, creating a local circular economy. The project is envisioned to be owned, managed, and operated by South Park community members, and provides first-hand experience to green infrastructure education and training, notably for youth.

The biodigester project has gained support and momentum, leading to imagining a neighborhood-wide and managed circular economy, supporting the Just Transition from a linear economy of extraction to a regenerative one. JC3 operates as a space to facilitate these conversations between community-based organizations, residents, and municipal agencies in order to best align with the intersecting movements of justice in South Park and the Duwamish Valley. JC3 collaborators will co-learn, share resources, and support one another to create strong social, inter-organizational, and built infrastructure for community ownership and benefit.

JC3 is a transdisciplinary collaboration that spans across multiple disciplines of the built environments and community organizing with a diverse knowledge base and set of lived experiences. Members of our collaboration also span across academic, professional, and non-profit and community-based organizations.