Article

Strategie pubbliche e aziendalizzazione dei servizi di gestione dei rifiuti urbani

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.

... However, waste management is also a social field marked by divergent interests and visions where alternative ideas, technologies and organisational models confront each other [4]. Street bin collection or door-to-door, incineration or material recovery, capital or job-intensive organisational models are all socio-technical apparatuses, which, whilst not mutually exclusive, nevertheless prefigure diversified visions of social relations. ...
Article
Full-text available
Waste management is one of the most strategic areas of regional policy planning. The impact of decisions such as the allocation of industrial waste treatment plants and waste collection strategies can affect the economic structure and quality of life of territories. The effectiveness of regulatory and organisational arrangements of Regional Waste Plans is linked to the availability of technologies and material infrastructure, but also to social consensus and behaviours. On this level, participatory planning conducted through foresight techniques plays an increasing role. The article presents an innovative case carried out in Valle d’Aosta in 2021, with the aim of promoting the participatory methodology experimented and the institutionalisation of such applications in strategic waste planning processes. The process involved 35 different stakeholders (unions, businesses, schools, trade, environmental associations, etc.) in structured consultations based on the principle of building a shared transition to 2030. In particular, the project was effective in broadening the participation of civil society in the area, in making the plan’s objectives more ambitious, and in fostering the creation of a collaborative network between public, market and third sector actors.
... Si tratta di un aspetto chiave che consente di analizzare in parallelo la diffusione della pratica discorsiva ZW e di quella relativa ai commons e alle rimunicipalizzazioni (Mattei 2018;Clifton et alii 2019). Su questo tema, Minervini (2016;2020), ha legato la gestione dei rifiuti al più ampio paradigma dell'economia fondamentale (Barbera e Jones 2020), mettendo in risalto il peculiare posizionamento delle aziende pubbliche in Italia -tra finalità pubblica e governance interna privatistica -e le implicazioni dei processi di quotazione in borsa e di finanziarizzazione del capitale sociale per il controllo da parte di cittadini e governi locali. La correlazione tra ownership pubblica e strategie di gestione dei servizi in ottica ZW è stata inoltre indagata in diversi lavori interdisciplinari a base empirica e comparativa (Romano et alii 2020;, dove emerge il ruolo di ZW come mission tesa a ri-legittimare un ritorno alla gestione pubblica dei servizi pubblici locali. ...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of the article is to analyse the social transformations produced and observed in the field of waste management. In particular, the focus is on the «Zero Waste» strategy, which has been proposing for at least two decades at a global level an alternative model of waste governance to the one centred on incinerators and landfills. The article proposes a theoretical framework to describe the genesis of «Zero Waste» as a discursive practice, proposing to observe jointly its characteristic symbolic, technological and organisational elements. In reporting the results of an ethnographic research conducted on the case of «Zero Waste» in Ita-ly, the article also focuses on the processes of knowledge exchange between social movements, local administrations, universities and municipalised companies, the conjunctions between ecological movements and movements for the commons, the start of processes of remunicipalisation of local public services starting from a new strategy of legitimation of the public vs. the private, and the progressive institution-alisation of political ecology in the European and local policy arena.
Article
Full-text available
44 (0) 29 20 87 44 35 Fax: + 44 (0) 29 20 87 41 75 Abstract From a service owned and provided by local government, UK municipal waste management has become one increasingly provided by large multinational companies. A series of political decisions laid the basis for the shift. It began with the programme of deregulation, contracting out and privatisation introduced by the Conservative governments of the 1980s. New Labour continued this process with the cumulative result that a new market in municipal waste exists today. Its development has also influenced the shape of the already existing wider waste management market with the result that this too has seen a process of concentration. A vertically integrated sector under municipal ownership was broken up and now appears to be heading for a vertical reintegration of the sector on the basis of private sector ownership. With the UK government's rejection of a public sector option, it is obliged to make a series of complicated interventions to attempt to further shape the market in order to meet environmental policy goals. The reliance on the market illustrates the difficulties in implementing major policy shifts through that medium.
Article
Full-text available
The 1994 European Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste allowed a diversity of conceptions of waste management to be developed and tested in various countries. Such a diversity may raise drawbacks related to the achievement of the single market and the European law of competition. The paper describes the main differences in waste management regimes in five countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Greece. This comparative approach allows us, first, to identify four main variables in order to characterize policy regimes, explaining the degree of orientation of waste regimes to cost-effectiveness. Second, we will show that implementation has resulted, in each country, in learning, correction and self-regulation, thus reducing the initial divergences between national regimes. Hence, efficient harmonization of waste management regimes may be achieved unexpectedly in a soft way without passing stringent European directives. Moreover, if policy-makers were to adopt explicitly the option of experimenting with competing organizational and policy concepts, as an approach to European harmonization, it would reveal, by 2004, the cost-effectiveness of alternative solutions at a time when European policy has to be reconsidered. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Article
Full-text available
Cost reduction was the key benefit claimed by privatization. We conduct a review of all published econometric studies of water and waste production since 1970. Little support is found for a link between privatization and cost savings. Cost savings are not found in water delivery and are not systematic in waste. Reviewed studies build from public choice, property rights, transaction costs and industrial organization theories. We conclude public choice theory is too focused on competition, which is typically not present in quasi-markets. Property rights theory gives attention to ownership and service quality, but absent competition, ownership makes little difference on costs borne by municipalities. Transaction costs argue privatization is best when contracts are complete—a rare situation in public service markets. We find the industrial organization approach most useful in explaining results because it directly addresses incentives, sector structure and regulatory framework. Overall, the empirical results show the importance of market structure, industrial organization of the service sector, and government management, oversight and regulation. Because there is no systematic optimal choice between public and private delivery, managers should approach the issue in a pragmatic way.
Book
Outsourcing-contracting out the delivery of public services to private providers-is a political revolution in the way the economy is governed. This book combines follow the money research and political analysis to critique outsourcing and constructively propose a “fee for management” alternative. Government presses outsourcing partly because it benefits when outsourcing delivers new possibilities of blame shifting. Cost reductions in the outsourced service are too often levered on wage reductions in the outsourced service which are futile when they increase the social bill for subvention of low wages. The result is a kind of sham capitalism which allows the private sector to take profit unjustifiably on mundane contracts without investment or revenue risk. At corporate level, the result is fiasco prone conglomerates and extensive arbitraging of limited liability in ways which disadvantage the citizen
Book
Haraway’s discussions of how scientists have perceived the sexual nature of female primates opens a new chapter in feminist theory, raising unsettling questions about models of the family and of heterosexuality in primate research.
Chapter
Using Actor-Network Theory the chapter describes how waste governance and policies are translated into socio-technical practices. Based on ethnographical research, the author narrates the journey of his wine bottle from the container collected by the regional waste management company in Molfetta in southern Italy until it becomes part of the glass purchased by a multinational corporation in Italy. After presenting the ethnographic account, the chapter discusses relevant insights about action and strategies, places and levels, interest and identities of the Italian waste governance in practice.
Chapter
The chapter examines how as a result of processes of privatisation, deregulation and marketization, public services such as waste management have been outsourced to public waste management organisations. As a result, municipal waste services have evolved either to behave like companies through hybrid public waste companies, or to be sold off to the private sector, often multi-national corporations. By taking the Dutch waste management sector as an example the chapter addresses what hybridity in waste management means, how it manifests and what opportunities and dilemmas it raises.
Book
The pubblication is an handbook of qualitative research which frames this practices into the theory of argumentation.
Book
For thirty years, the British economy has repeated the same old experiment of subjecting everything to competition and market because that is what works in the imagination of central government. This book demonstrates the repeated failure of that experiment by detailed examination of three sectors: broadband, food supply and retail banking. The book argues for a new experiment in social licensing whereby the right to trade in foundational activities would be dependent on the discharge of social obligations in the form of sourcing, training and living wages. Written by a team of researchers and policy advocates based at the Centre for Research on Socio Cultural Change, this book combines rigour and readability, and will be relevant to practitioners, policy makers, academics and engaged citizens. © Andrew Bowman, Ismail Ertürk, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, John Law, Adam Leaver, Michael Moran and Karel Williams 2014.
Article
The institutional setting of regional and local government in Italy appears to be characterised by an ongoing process of reform and adjustment ever since Regions were created in 1970. More recently, provinces and Municipalities gained wide autonomy in 1990, and the constitution itself was revised in 2001 to set up what is sometimes referred to as a ‘quasi-federal’ system of intergovernmental relations. In this context, inter-municipal cooperation also has witnessed several phases and dynamics, ranging from (very rare) fusions, through single-purpose cooperation, to integrated service management (Public-public partnership, and consortia for the management and/or regulation of public utilities). More recently, and most notably over the past decade, inter-municipal cooperation has taken on a new form, consisting in the shared ownership in joint-stock companies. The so-called ‘corporatisation’ of public bodies, i.e. the creation of public-owned (or mixed public-private), private-law companies and corporations for the fulfilment of public-interest activities, has come to constitute a network of inter-municipal cooperation that appears to represent a shift from an institutional intergovernmental structure of cooperation, to one that is pre-eminently played out in the arenas of public-private forms of governance. The article analyses the literature and overarching trends in inter-municipal cooperation in Italy, and draws on very rich original data on the companies owned by Municipalities in six Italian regions to show how these companies represent the locus of inter-municipal (and multi-level) relations that go well beyond the formal boundaries of local administrations, and are often brokered by powerful private partners.
Article
The paper analyses and explains the appeal of the concepts of profession and professionalism and the increased use of these concepts in different occupational groups, work contexts and social systems. The paper begins with a brief preliminary section on defining the field where it is suggested that a shift of focus is required from a preoccupation with defining `profession' to analysis of the appeal to `professionalism' as a motivator for and facilitator of occupational change. Then the paper examines two past, alternative and contrasting, sociological interpretations of professionalism (as normative value system and as ideology of occupational powers). In the third section the paper argues that, in the 1990s, a third interpretation has developed which includes both normative and ideological elements. Sociologists have returned to the concept of professionalism in attempts to understand occupational and organizational change and the prominence of knowledge work in different social systems and global economies. The fourth section returns to the question of the appeal of the concept of professionalism in promoting and facilitating occupational change, and considers how the balance between the normative and ideological elements of professionalism is played out differently in occupational groups in very different employment situations.
Article
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.
Book
Most writing on sociological method has been concerned with how accurate facts can be obtained and how theory can thereby be more rigorously tested. In The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss address the equally Important enterprise of how the discovery of theory from data--systematically obtained and analyzed in social research--can be furthered. The discovery of theory from data--grounded theory--is a major task confronting sociology, for such a theory fits empirical situations, and is understandable to sociologists and laymen alike. Most important, it provides relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations, and applications. In Part I of the book, "Generation Theory by Comparative Analysis," the authors present a strategy whereby sociologists can facilitate the discovery of grounded theory, both substantive and formal. This strategy involves the systematic choice and study of several comparison groups. In Part II, The Flexible Use of Data," the generation of theory from qualitative, especially documentary, and quantitative data Is considered. In Part III, "Implications of Grounded Theory," Glaser and Strauss examine the credibility of grounded theory. The Discovery of Grounded Theory is directed toward improving social scientists' capacity for generating theory that will be relevant to their research. While aimed primarily at sociologists, it will be useful to anyone Interested In studying social phenomena--political, educational, economic, industrial-- especially If their studies are based on qualitative data.
The Laws of the Markets
  • M Callon
Crescita e occupazione nel settore del riciclo dei rifiuti urbani - Sintesi dei risultati di uno studio promosso dal Ministro dell’Ambiente, testo disponibile al sito
  • Althesys Conai
Aziende di servizi pubblici e cittadini per l’ambiente
  • V Corradi
Waste management in europe: companies, structure and employement
  • D Hall
  • T A Nguyen
Politica e Rifiuti. Connessioni socio-tecniche nella governance dell’ambiente. Liguori: Napoli
  • D Minervini
Il capitale quotidiano. L’estrazione di valore nell’economia fondamentale
  • Aa
  • Vv
L’Italia del Riciclo - Rapporto annuale sul riciclo ed il recupero dei rifiuti, testo disponibile al sito
  • Fise Unire
  • Fondazione
  • Lo Sviluppo Sostenibile
Waste Valuation Performed by Socio-Technical Connections
  • D Minervini
Recenti tendenze dei servizi pubblici locali in materia ambientale
  • A Pierobon
A State of Unlearning? Government as Experiment
  • J Law
  • K Williams
Il progetto per tagliare le 1.100 società pubbliche dei servizi. Repubblica, 15 settembre
  • L Pagni