Between waste and value: A socio-material and political perspective on the blue bioeconomy in Brittany and Quebec

This paper examines how the blue bioeconomy is territorially shaped through the contested relation between waste management and value creation. Drawing on a qualitative cross-case study of Brittany, France, and the north of Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec, it analyses two ordinary and incomplete initiatives based on high value valorization of marine biomass: green seaweed and shrimp residues. Using a sociomaterial and political conceptual framework, the article shows that circularization is not a simple technical feature of bioeconomy, but a process shaped by institutional arrangements, framings, and material infrastructures. In both cases, the rise of higher-value activities depends on pre-existing waste-management systems that simultaneously enable and constrain development. These initiatives are not fully circular; they depend on fragile compromises between territorial anchoring, efficiency, and market upgrading. The paper argues that blue bioeconomy regulation is shaped by the political and infrastructural conditions through which biomass is classified, circulated, and requalified.