Making waste management public (or falling back to sleep)

Abstract

Human-produced waste is a major environmental concern, with communities considering various waste management practices, such as increased recycling, landfilling, incineration, and waste-to-energy technologies. This article is concerned with how and why publics assemble around waste management issues. In particular, we explore Noortje Marres and Bruno Latour’s theory that publics do not exist prior to issues but rather assemble around objects, and through these assemblages, objects become matters of concern that sometimes become political. The article addresses this theory of making things public through a study of a small city in Ontario, Canada, whose landfill is closed and waste diversion options are saturated, and that faces unsustainable costs in shipping its waste to the United States, China, and other regions. The city’s officials are undertaking a cost–benefit assessment to determine the efficacy of siting a new landfill or other waste management facility. We are interested in emphasizing the complexity of making (or not making) landfills public, by exploring an object in action, where members of the public may or may not assemble, waste may or may not be made into an issue, and waste is sufficiently routinized that it is not typically transformed from an object to an issue. We hope to demonstrate Latour’s third and fifth senses of politics best account for waste management’s trajectory as a persistent yet inconsistent matter of public concern.

Modes of governing Canadian waste management: a case study of Metro Vancouver’s energy-from-waste controversy

“…Indeed, neoliberal governance enhances industry's monopoly by embedding techniques such as public consultations, and feasibility studies within industry's remit. In other words, geo-engineering and economics are the primary discourses through which modern WM operates (for an expanded explanation see Hird, Lougheed, Rowe, & Kuyvenhoven, 2014).…”

“…Like other Canadian municipalities, MV responded to dwindling landfill space and increasing costs by initiating an ambitious waste diversion campaign and proposing an expansion of EfW capacity concurrent with this diversion campaign (Government of British Columbia, 2014b; Metro Vancouver, 2010; for case studies in other Canadian municipalities see: Hird et al, 2014;Lougheed et al, 2016). Significant opposition to previous proposals to expand the region's two landfills and the proposal to increase the region's EfW capacity put the proposals on hold.…”

Governing Household Waste Management: An Empirical Analysis and Critique

“…If the City Council does not act quickly on these recommendations, it will have to sign another five-year contract with a WM company and will be unable to move forward on the consultant's recommendations until 2019 (ibid.). The City Council is Environmental Values 25.3 therefore doubly motivated to: (1) reduce landfill waste, thus reducing their per-ton payments to Waste Management Canada Inc.; and (2) complete a swift deliberation and consultation (for a detailed analysis see Hird et al, 2014).…”

“…In Canada, municipal solid waste (MSW) management poses a significant environmental and logistical challenge for municipalities as existing landfills reach or surpass capacity, opposition to developing new landfills grows, and transport costs increase (Ali, 1999;Hird et al, 2014;Reno, 2011). Municipalities pay industry millions of dollars annually to transport and dispose of their MSW waste.…”

Waste and Waste Management

“…Moreover, as emerging DIY and scholarly-activist collaborations demonstrate, there are other ways in which anthropologists and other scholars might productively engage with vital matters of human living, which otherwise become the exclusive domain of sanitary engineers, urban planners and environmental policymakers (Liboiron 2012;The Grassroots Mapping Forum 2014;Hird et al 2014).…”