Unable to start containers when environment variable not set

[SerialVelocity]

I'm unable to start containers because of the error:

'docker-compose ps -q The CIRCLECI variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.' returned exit code 1
            The output was:
            The CIRCLECI variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.
            No such service: The CIRCLECI variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.

Here's a log line which may also help debug the problem:

23:57:56.116 [pool-4-thread-1] INFO com.palantir.docker.compose.logging.FileLogCollector - Writing logs for container 'The CIRCLECI variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string.' to '<path-to-project>/build/dockerLogs/<class-name>/The CIRCLECI variable is not set. Defaulting to a blank string..log'

docker-compose.yml:

version: "3"
services:
  postgres:
    build:
      context: ../../../../project-folder
      args:
        - CIRCLECI=${CIRCLECI}