The idea of the circular economy assumes that technocratic intervention can reform economic life in ways that minimise the environmental impact of human action. In this imagination, processes of production and consumption can be synthesised into an elegant closed cycle. This essay argues that the fully circular economy is an unrealisable ambition, akin to the techno-magical aspirations of alchemists, whose work sought attractive yet impossible solutions to material problems. This essay will explain how a discussion of the alchemy of the circular economy reveals something broader about the nature of work and human society. The first part of the essay discusses how the human appeal of the circular economy relates to environmental crisis. The second part discusses why the ideal of the circular economy is contradicted by the nature of human work