UK Municipal Waste Management: From a Public Service to a Globalised Industry

Abstract

The UK's municipal waste management service has been transformed from a service owned and provided by local government into one increasingly provided by large multinational companies. A series of political decisions laid the basis for this, beginning with the programme of deregulation, contracting out and privatisation introduced by the Conservative governments of the 1980s. The process has continued under New Labour 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. Having broken up a vertically integrated sector under municipal ownership, this reformation of the municipal waste market appears to be heading for a vertical reintegration of the sector on the basis of private sector ownership.