| Summary: | Household waste management in Västerbotten, Sweden - investigating how small municipalities aim for waste reduction Author: Sofia Sparrfeldt Abstract The aim of the study is to investigate how small municipalities in Västerbotten County (Northern Sweden) manage household waste. Eight municipalities have established a cooperation, including a joint plan to handle waste management in order to lower the amount of waste. The goal was to interview all eight municipalities, but only six of them answered. Based on the interview results, the municipalities had accepted the plan aiming to lower the amount of household waste, but not all of them had initiated the implementation of the plan. According to data from the joint waste management plan, the amount of waste did not decrease between the years 2008-2011. However, the data was collected during a time period before the plan was finally ready to be implemented. Some of the interviewed municipalities expect that the load of waste will decrease in their municipality, but this was not always directly related to implementation of the joint waste management plan. Municipalities rather assume that the reduction is related to a general population decrease, or that a tense economic situation of the citizens affected their consumption. In general, the civil servants in most of the investigated municipalities have many different tasks in addition to coordinating the waste management. Therefore, they appreciated a joint effort among small municipalities. However, they also identified disadvantages with the cooperation, such as for example that it can take very long time to get something happening when many municipalities are involved. Keywords: household waste, waste management, Sweden
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