Recycling and the Politics of Urban Waste
Recycling and the Politics of Urban Waste

Author: Matthew Gandy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1134162707

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The affluence of western society has given rise to unprecedented quantities of waste, presenting one of the most intractable environmental problems for contemporary society. This book examines recycling and municipal waste management in three major cities: London, New York and Hamburg. A range of political and economic issues are examined to illustrate how any reduction in the size of the waste stream in order to achieve more equitable and environmentally sustainable patterns of resource use is incompatible with the current emphasis in the use of the market for environmental protection. The case studies show how, contrary to the hopes of many environmentalists and policy makers, municipal waste management is moving steadily towards the profitable option of incineration with energy recovery, rather than the recycling of materials or waste reduction at source. The evidence suggests that the achievement of a more sustainable pattern of recycling and waste management policy would demand a fundamental change in public policy, to give government a more active role in environmental protection.

Resisting Garbage
Resisting Garbage

Author: Lily Baum Pollans

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1477323708

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Resisting Garbage presents a new approach to understanding practices of waste removal and recycling in American cities, one that is grounded in the close observation of case studies while being broadly applicable to many American cities today. Most current waste practices in the United States, Lily Baum Pollans argues, prioritize sanitation and efficiency while allowing limited post-consumer recycling as a way to quell consumers’ environmental anxiety. After setting out the contours of this “weak recycling waste regime,” Pollans zooms in on the very different waste management stories of Seattle and Boston over the last forty years. While Boston’s local politics resulted in a waste-export program with minimal recycling, Seattle created new frameworks for thinking about consumption, disposal, and the roles that local governments and ordinary people can play as partners in a project of resource stewardship. By exploring how these two approaches have played out at the national level, Resisting Garbage provides new avenues for evaluating municipal action and fostering practices that will create environmentally meaningful change.

Urban Waste and Sanitation Services for Sustainable Development
Urban Waste and Sanitation Services for Sustainable Development

Author: Bas van Vliet

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1135051852

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Urban sanitation and solid waste sectors are under significant pressure in East Africa due to the lack of competent institutional capacity and the growth of the region’s urban population. This book presents and applies an original analytical approach to assess the existing socio-technical mixtures of waste and sanitation systems and to ensure wider access, increase flexibility and ecological sustainability. It shows how the problem is not the current diversity in waste and sanitation infrastructures and services and variety of types and scales of technology, of formal and informal sector involvement, and of management and ownership modes. The book focuses instead on the lack of an integrative approach to managing and upgrading of the various waste and sanitation configurations and services so as to ensure wider access, flexibility and sustainability for the low income populations who happen to be the main stakeholders. This approach, coined "Modernized Mixtures", serves as a nexus throughout the book. The empirical core addresses the waste and sanitation challenges and debates at each scale - from the micro-level (households) to the macro-level (international support) - and is based on the results of a five-year-long interdisciplinary, empirical research program. It assesses the socio-technical diversity in waste and sanitation and provides viable solutions to sanitation and waste management in East Africa. This book provides students, researchers and professional in environmental technology, sociology, management and urban planning with an integrated analytical perspective on centralized and decentralized waste and sanitation configurations and tools for improvement in the technology, policy and management of sanitation and solid waste sectors.