Organizing waste management, waste governance and sustainable urban development Hervé Corvellec * Patrik Zapata ** *Department of Service Management, Lund.

Organizing waste management,

waste governance and sustainable urban

developmentHervé Corvellec *Patrik Zapata **

*Department of Service Management, Lund University & GRI, Gothenburg University

** School of public administration, Gothenburg University

September 30, 2013 - Borås

Current research projects

• Organizing critical infrastructure services - A case study of waste management (2009-2013). Project financed by VINNOVA (Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems): 5,2 Msek (ca 573 000 Euros). Head of project: Hervé Corvellec. www.ism.lu.se/oki

• Governing in Action Nets - Swedish Municipalities and their Waste Responsibility (2011-2013) Project financed by CEFOS, University of Gothenburg: 910 000 SEK (ca 105 000 Euros); Head of project Patrik Zapata (School of Public Administration, Gothenburg University)

Past research projects

• Waste in translation. How ideas of management travel from global to local through development aid organisations (2010-2011). Project financed by GCGD (Gothenburg Centre for Global Development): 300000 sek (ca €33000). Head of project: María José Zapata Campos

• The hybridisation of the organising of sustainability (2011-2012). Financed by the Wallander foundation: 160000 sek (ca €17000): Head of project: María José Zapata Campos

New research projects

• From waste management to waste prevention: Closing implementation gaps through sustainable action nets (Från avfallshantering till avfallsförebyggande - Att minska genomförandeunderskott med hållbara handlingsnät) (2013-2017). Project financed by FORMAS (The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning), 7,9 MSek / ca 910 000 Euros. Head of project: Hervé Corvellec

• Decoupling services: New management practices for a new understanding of waste (Frikopplingstjänster: Nya managementpraktiker för en ny syn på avfall) (2013-2015). Project financed by Plattformen, Helsingborg Stad: 1,1 MSek / ca 126 000 Euros. Head of project: Hervé Corvellec

Associated research projects

• The territorial dimension of waste policies: constructing a regime of proximity (Dimensions territoriales des politiques de gestion des dechets : la construction d’un regime de proximite PROXITER). 2013-2016. Co-heads of projects Claudia Cirelli and Fabrizio Maccaglia, Tours University (France). Project financed by the French national agency for innovation (ADEME). Ca 70 000 SEK (8000 Euros) for my contribution.

Other relevant research projects

• Green shops: sustainable retailing and value-creating practices (Gröna butiker: hållbar handel och värdeskapande praktiker). Project financed by The Swedish Retail and Wholesale Development Council (HUR), 2,4 MSek. Head of project: Cecilia Fredriksson

• Participatory Sustainable Waste Management (PSWM) project, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Brazilian and Canadian partners. The research is action-oriented, community-based, and applies multi-methods approaches, including focus group discussions, video and photography, participatory appraisals, and community mappings. Head of project: Jutta Guteberlet. http://pswm.uvic.ca

Main research themes

1. Organizing waste management

2. Waste governance3. Waste management for

sustainable urban development

1. Organising waste management

• Business models • Multiple regimes of value creation

• Societal narratives• Sociomateriality

• Crossing points • Lock-in

Public Service

activities

Public Service

activities

Marketing activities

Marketing activities

Waste

managem

ent fees

Waste

managem

ent fees

Processing activities

Processing activities

Waste Products and recycled materials

Was

te

man

agem

ent

Inco

me

Was

te

man

agem

ent

Inco

me

Incomes from

sales

Incomes from

sales

Organization’s boundaries

LandfillLandfill

An original business model Corvellec,

Hervé, Bramryd, Torleif & Hultman, Johan (2012) The business model of solid waste management in Sweden: A case study of two municipally-owned companies. Waste Management & Research, 30(5): 512-518.

Political market

Products and recycled material

market

Processing techniques

marketWaste market

Municipal Waste

Company

Multiple market exposure

See: Corvellec, Hervé, Bramryd, Torleif (2012) The multiple market-exposure of waste management companies: A case study of two Swedish municipally owned companies. Waste Management, 32(9): 1722-1727.

Multidimensional value delivery

Public health valuePractical valueLegal valueEconomic valueEnvironmental valuePolitical valueSymbolic value

Politics of multiple-value creation in waste

management• Different types of value• Different stakeholders• Different time/spatial scales• Different regimes of value

(Appadurai) / waste regimes (Gille)

See: Corvellec, Hervé & Hultman, Johan (Accepted with minor revision, September 12, 2013) Managing the politics of value propositions. Marketing Theory.

Changing societal narratives on waste

• More waste

• Landfilling less

• Recycling more

• Wasting less

See: Corvellec, Hervé, & Hultman, Johan (2012) From ‘Less Landfilling’ to ‘Wasting Less’: Societal narratives, socio-materiality, and organizations. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25(2): 297-314.

The changing socio-materiality of waste

• Waste is a socio-material: a material that depends on production, consumption and divesting practices; value judgements; legal definitions (note that waste can stop being waste), location and else

• Socio-materiality object of waste policy (waste hierarchy model) and practices of waste management companies

Crossing Points• Maintenance and repair (Graham and Thrift);

Transformation in Crossing points (Hawkins)• The formal and informal parts of the city – waste as

example• The residents of illegal neighbourhoods and the

waste pickers became city constructors and co-producers of basic services such as household waste collection rather than service recipients of aid programmes or municipal governments.

• By slightly changing the actions of the actors already involved in informal waste handling in the informal settlements, this development project transformed an agent of pollution into the solution to several interconnected problems, namely illegal dumping by the cart-men and residents, the cart-men’s low and irregular incomes and the lack of household waste collection services.

Zapata Campos, M. J. & Zapata, P. (2013). Switching Managua on! Connecting informal settlements to the formal city through household waste collection. Environment and Urbanization, Vol 25(1): 1–18

But: locked-in incineration?

District heating has made it possible to develop incineration on a large scale. But might Sweden has locked itself into a form of efficacy that prevent the emergence of more advanced waste management strategies?

Sä

ve

nä

s, G

öte

bo

rg

See: Corvellec, Hervé, Zapata Campos, María José, & Zapata, Patrik (2013) Infrastructures, lock-in, and sustainable urban development: The case of waste incineration in a Swedish metropolitan area. Journal of Cleaner Production, 50(1): 32–39

Lock-in factors- The Sävenäs case

• Institutional– Limitations put on landfilling within the EU (2002 and 2005)– Unclear future of the municipal monopoly on household waste

• Technical/Economic– Large capacity – High fixed costs – High break-even– District heating and electricity production depend on

incineration– Good economic results for Sävenäs incineration plant

• Cultural– Local trust (politicians, civil servants, citizens) for incineration,– International acknowledgements

• Material– Massive infrastructure– Interlocking with other infrastructures (transportation, energy)

2. Waste governance

• Hybrid organizations

• The European Waste Hierarchy

Hybrid organizations

• Municipally owned organizations combine monopoly based activities with market based activities

• Major public-private conflict over legislation and long term planning

• This hybridism has prompted much innovations over the last 30 years; unclear how the future will be

See: Lindqvist, Katja (2013) Hybrid Governance: The Case of Household Solid Waste Management in Sweden, Public Organization Review, 13(2): 143-154

European Waste Hierarchy…

Source: Lunds Renhållningsverk

Toward a new politics of materials ?

• European Waste Hierarchy – Uniform model of waste

governance– Creates paradoxical relationships

between economy and society – Creates paradoxical relationships

between environment and nature– Open the way for a discussion of a

politics of consumptionSee: Hultman, Johan & Corvellec, Hervé (2012) The European waste hierarchy: from the sociomateriality of waste to a politics of consumption. Environment & Planning A, 44(10): 2413–2427.

Normalising food-waste overflows

• Food waste transformed in biogas

• Follow the rationale of destruction rather than the rationale of production (Bataille)

• Overflow into input• Management as normalising

machineSee: Corvellec, Hervé (Forthcoming) Recycling food waste into biogas, or how management transforms overflows into flows. In, Czarniawska, Barbara & Löfgren, Orvar (eds.) Coping with excess: How organizations, communities and individuals manage overflows. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Recycling has a cost

Not to be forgotten: • Recycling aluminium, glass, plastic or paper cost

energy

• Gains are made in comparison to the use of virgin resources / new production

• Recycling involves often down-cycling

• There is a lack of recycling alternatives for many waste flows

The slow re-birth of re-use

Alelyckan recycling and reuse park

“H&M starts a global system of used cloth collection system”Veckans affärer, 2012-12-06

Zapata Campos, M. J.; Zapata, P. (2013) Urban waste: closing the system. In Leonie J. Pearson, Peter Newton and Peter Roberts (Eds) Resilient Sustainable Cities. London: Taylor & Francis/Routledge.

And might there be a gap?

Management of something that exists Prevention of something from existing

?

New research project: Challenges of prevention (FORMAS)

• New definitions of responsibility:

– Municipal responsibility – Producers’ responsibility– Distributors’ responsibility– Consumers’ responsibility

• New demands for information:

– Material use– How to recycle

• New authoriry– Conditioned right to market

products and services

• New business models – Hire or lease– SHaredownershio– De-materialisation

• New patterns of actions– Collaboration over the value

chain– Frugality

3. Waste management for sustainable urban

development

“The horrors of the world”

The inhabited garbage dump in Nicaragua

The inhabited garbage dump in Nicaragua

“De la Vega enters La Chureca garbage dump, travelling to the entrails of misery” El Mundo, Spain, 2007/08/04

Main themes and findings• From man-made disaster to Global to city to slum to

practice – waste travel well• Formal & informal• Waste mgmt is a complex complex hybrid net of actions and actants-

city authorities is (might be) one actor involved

• Co-production• Landfilling less, not wasting less• Visibility • Waste transfer stations, a travelling idea• Intercultural translators, who are they representing?

Zapata Campos, M. J. ; Zapata, P. (2014). The travel of global ideas of waste management. the case of Managua and its informal settlements. Habitat International. 41 (January 2014) s. 41-49.

Zapata Campos, M. J. ; Zapata, P. (2013). Switching Managua on! Connecting informal settlements

to the formal city through household waste collection. Environment and Urbanization, Vol 25(1): 1–18.

Zapata Campos, M. J. ; Zapata, P. (2013). Translating development aid into city management: the barrio Acahualinca integrated development programme in Managua,

Nicaragua. Public Administration and Development, 33: 101–112.

Zapata, Patrik (2013) Waste in Translation. Global ideas of urban waste management in local practice. In Zapata Campos and Hall, Michael (Eds) Organising waste in the city: international perspectives on narratives and practices, Cha 5. Bristol: The Policy Press.

Zapata Campos, M. J. ; Zapata, P. (2012). Changing La Chureca. Organizing City Resilience through Action Nets. Journal of Change Management

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Time, Space, People

• Waste is a cultural construction• Waste practices are situated in

time and space• De/re-regulation and

globalisation are re-shaping the movements of waste

• Prevention creates qualitatively new challenges

Future research themes

1. The commoditization of waste 2. Re-articulating

[ Consuming | Wasting ]3. Corporate waste reduction

programs4. Truly sustainable waste

management 5. Exporting waste expertise

Thank you for your attention

[email protected]@spa.gu.se