TY - JOUR
T1 - England’s municipal waste regime
T2 - challenges and prospects
AU - Gregoson, Nicky
AU - Forman, Peter
N1 - Funding information: Our thanks go to the Department of Geography, Durham University’s Impact Fund for providing the financial support to enable Pete Forman to compile the contracts dataset and Emma Lancaster to produce Figure 1. A huge debt goes to Adam Holden, in his previous role as the Department of Geography’s Impact Support Officer, for his continued support of, and belief in, this work and for finding imaginative ways to resource it. Thanks also to: Gavin Bridge, Rob Ferguson and Paul Langley for their comments, and prompts, at varying stages. The usual disclaimers apply.
PY - 2021/9/1
Y1 - 2021/9/1
N2 - This paper provides a synthetic account of England’s municipal waste regime at the end of the 2010s. In technical-material terms, the regime, previously heavily dependent upon landfill, is now characterised by energy-from-waste and recycling and/or composting in fairly equal measure. This infrastructural transformation, enacted over some 20 years, has been underpinned by the financialisation and marketisation of England’s municipal waste. Residual waste has been constituted as a financial asset whilst both residual waste and materials collected for recycling are the basis for further commodity production. The corporate landscape is dominated by large, European-based transnationals. As well as documenting the regime and its emergence, the paper highlights, and accounts for, the multiple challenges it now faces – chiefly, the technical failure of residual waste solutions which necessitate a continued reliance on landfill for some councils, the collapse of the export markets on which England’s resource recovery has depended, and a radically changed policy landscape that seeks to move England towards a more circular economy. We suggest that local authorities’ waste infrastructure, procured in response to a linear economy, threatens and is threatened by these new policy directions.
AB - This paper provides a synthetic account of England’s municipal waste regime at the end of the 2010s. In technical-material terms, the regime, previously heavily dependent upon landfill, is now characterised by energy-from-waste and recycling and/or composting in fairly equal measure. This infrastructural transformation, enacted over some 20 years, has been underpinned by the financialisation and marketisation of England’s municipal waste. Residual waste has been constituted as a financial asset whilst both residual waste and materials collected for recycling are the basis for further commodity production. The corporate landscape is dominated by large, European-based transnationals. As well as documenting the regime and its emergence, the paper highlights, and accounts for, the multiple challenges it now faces – chiefly, the technical failure of residual waste solutions which necessitate a continued reliance on landfill for some councils, the collapse of the export markets on which England’s resource recovery has depended, and a radically changed policy landscape that seeks to move England towards a more circular economy. We suggest that local authorities’ waste infrastructure, procured in response to a linear economy, threatens and is threatened by these new policy directions.
KW - circular economy
KW - energy-from-waste
KW - infrastructure
KW - municipal waste
KW - recycling
KW - waste regimes
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108366499&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/geoj.12386
DO - 10.1111/geoj.12386
M3 - Article
VL - 187
SP - 214
EP - 226
JO - Geographical Journal
JF - Geographical Journal
SN - 0016-7398
IS - 3
ER -