Chapter 5. Rethinking the public waste service
Chapter 5. Rethinking the public waste service The experiences presented in the previous chapters show that there are numerous possibilities to promote waste recycling and recovery in global South countries: make use of and integrate the activity of informal actors, promote composting, and encourage actions jointly set up by grassroots initiatives and public authorities. Although financing these activities is a recurrent difficulty in a context of cash-strapped budgets and weak public institutions, Chapter 4 pointed up the pathways taken by different cities to stabilise waste management budgets, reduce certain costs or contract out part of the service to third party providers (informal workers, companies, organised communities). All these innovations suggest that the public waste management sector needs to be viewed through a different lens so that it can be adapted to local contexts which always have their own specific features. The case studies do not lead us to propose one-size-fits-all solutions. On the contrary, they show that headway can only result from a localised reflection and contextspecific solutions. It is in this spirit that the final chapter of the report highlights a number of levers (territorial, organisational, logistic, technical) which, depending on the case, may offer possible avenues for diverting waste. This chapter is also an opportunity to reflect on the main models underpinning waste management and to look at waste management through the prism of the commons, going beyond the dichotomy that opposes resource and nuisance.
I.
What governance and what territorial scale for waste recovery?
Before developing any technical or financial models for waste management, it seems important to structure the institutional framework for this activity. This framework is based on the actors traditionally in charge of waste management, as well as others who have been incorporated more recently.
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