The Municipal Waste Management Sector in Europe: Shifting Boundaries Between Public Service and the Market

Abstract

This paper provides a comparative assessment of the organization of urban waste management in selected European countries and discusses the regulatory implications of the ongoing evolution. Using an institutional economic approach, focused on governance of transactions along the value chain, we argue that: i) there is evidence of an increasing shift towards operator‐based integrated systems; ii) the emphasis put on material and energy recovery opens the market far beyond the traditional legal monopolies established for managing urban services. These results pose new challenges for economic regulation and make it more complicate to trace the boundary between the public service and the market domain. Spaces for competition in the market have become much larger, but the role of public regulation and planning are nonetheless more far‐reaching than in the past.

Local Public Services in European Countries: Main Results of a Research Project by Ciriec International

“…Moreover even in the same country we have different shares of private companies among different parts of the same service. Evidence of this is found in the table reproduced in the paper by Antonioli and Massarutto 2011: 14), showing that in waste collection private companies contribute 100% of activity in Finland and only around 30% in the Netherlands, while in disposal private enterprises in Finland cover less than 5% of activity and more than 90% in Spain (incidentally, while Finland is the first in collection, it is the last in disposal).…”

“…A second powerful drive in structural change comes from changes in the nature of the service provided and the corresponding changes in technologies; in the waste sector, for instance, attention has shifted from the mere collection to the disposal and recycling phase, transforming the general interest which ‘is not confined to the dimension of urban propriety and public health, but is concerned with much more far reaching sustainability issues’ (Antonioli and Massarutto 2011: 5). ‘The focus of policies changes from simple removal of waste to planning of disposal and managing the material flow, with an associated shift in terms of key actors, key words and managing solutions’ (Antonioli and Massarutto 2011: 5). Here the technological scenario in which the sector operates has transformed the entire scenario creating new actors and a new relationship between the role of the private and the public sector.…”

“…The role of planning has changed in the period considered since the services supplied have become more complex and have acquired greater spatial and longer‐term time dimensions. In the three sectors greater horizontal and vertical coordination has been needed (Antonioli and Massarutto 2012: 525, Bauby 2012: 569). In the local public transport, for instance, there has been a clear increase in institutionalized and non‐formally regulated cooperation and coordination between different institutions or authorities and suppliers or providers; new governance structures were created mainly in terms of specialization and territorial integration (Zatti 2011: 33) and regional authorities have been increasingly charged with the task of supervision and coordination of the local passenger transport (Zatti 2011: 28).…”

“…As for the waste sector there has been a change while planning plays a fundamental role in the infancy phases of the disposal industry (coordinating the transition from landfill to more modern solutions) ‘the more mature the market becomes and the more professional management is needed, the more planning leaves space to operator‐based integrated systems, with planning mainly limited to the definition of targets, regulation and, eventually, provision of last resort solutions when emergencies occur. This development is clearly correlated to the increase – both dimensional and in the scope of activity – of the role of the private sector’ (Antonioli and Massarutto 2011: 12).…”

“…While in some cases (e.g. the Belgium local transport system) 12 private units are limited to very narrow tasks, operating through subcontracting with very restricted autonomy, in other cases the discretionary power assigned to the private enterprise is large, sometimes including the task of designing the service (Antonioli and Massarutto 2011: 9). Therefore the simple figure of the share of the service owned by private enterprises does not meaningfully represent the effective role played by them.…”