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.

中文翻译：

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英格兰的城市垃圾管理制度：挑战和前景

本文综合介绍了 2010 年代末英国的城市垃圾管理制度。在技​​术材料方面，该制度以前严重依赖垃圾填埋场，现在的特点是废物能源和回收利用和/或堆肥相当平等。这种基础设施转型已经实施了大约 20 年，得到了英格兰城市垃圾的金融化和市场化的支持。残余废物已构成金融资产，而收集用于回收的残余废物和材料则是进一步商品生产的基础。企业版图由总部位于欧洲的大型跨国公司主导。除了记录该政权及其出现之外，该论文还强调并说明了它现在面临的多重挑战——主要是，残留废物解决方案的技术故障导致一些议会必须继续依赖垃圾填埋场，英格兰资源回收所依赖的出口市场崩溃，以及旨在推动英格兰走向更加循环经济的政策格局发生根本变化。我们建议，地方政府为响应线性经济而采购的废弃基础设施会威胁并受到这些新政策方向的威胁。