In My Backyard? Discussing the NIMBY Effect, Social Acceptability, and Residents’ Involvement in Community-Based Solid Waste Management

Abstract

The present study explored an experience in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in which a community-based solid waste management experience was created by joining a waste pickers’ cooperative; a collective of urban agroecology activists; an alliance of social actors, including a university, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and membership-based organizations (MBOs); and a local community in a collaborative experience of zero waste that integrates waste pickers. More specifically, we focused on the Zero Waste Nucleus, which is an “intentional place” built in the territory that supports this experience and, as a facility, can face the “Not in My Backyard” (NIMBY) effects in the local production. The core of the analysis and discussion was how the process of developing the social acceptability of this space with the neighborhood took place, and how this space contributes to enhancing residents’ involvement in the project. We showed that daily care with negative externalities, the emergence of positive externalities, and the development of immaterial resources within the community, such as trust, are main factors for good social acceptability. Our conclusion presents the operational concept of Place for Assisted Voluntary Delivery (LEVA, in Portuguese) as a synthesis of design elements that can help build places to support community-based waste management systems, and reveals the limits of this study and the opportunities for future research in this field.