Governing Waste

The activities of Americans create 250 million tons of waste each day, a quantity steadily increasing over the last sixty years. Disposing of waste is a financial burden for governments due to potential environmental, public health, and aesthetic impacts. Consequentially, a complex web of local, state, and federal entities and processes developing since the late 18th century now governs waste removal and reduction practices.

As public managers continue to struggle with the environmental and economic impacts of waste management it is important to understand barriers to and potentials for reform in organizational structures and administrative practices. Governing Waste: Politics, Process and Public Administration documents and assesses these practices and resulting management activities focusing specifically on the American public administrative experience. It provides both an understanding of the current conditions of waste creation as well as raises possibilities for creating a more sustainable future through the practice of public management.

Grounding the importance of the discussion of waste within broader discussions of sustainability and public administration, Sarah Surak begins by providing a description of the current state of waste management as well as the economic drivers for particular forms of management in order to identify overall themes and practices of waste, public administration, and sustainability. In Part Two she describes specific aspects of current practices of waste management: large-scale infrastructure development for the disposal of waste and municipal recycling and composting programs. This section assesses the logistics of municipal management identifying standard practices to distinguish potential barriers and opportunities to sustainable practices. The final section looks towards alternative resource management arrangements, both those found in practice as well as proposed in theory.