From waste management to waste prevention. Closing implementation gaps through sustainable action nets

This project deals with the principle formulated by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency that sustainable waste policy should be oriented toward waste prevention and not only waste management. National authorities can steer through decisions and legislation, and introduce incitements and control mechanisms. But practical responsibility for a sustainable waste reduction is given to a non coordinated mix of local actors.

The aim of this research project is to identify and explain gaps between planning and implementation for sustainable development based on the case of waste prevention. Waste prevention illustrates the gaps that tend to appear between plans and outcomes when local authorities implement a national policy in collaboration with actors (corporations, associations,citizens) with diverging interests and priorities. Providing a theoretical understanding of implementation gaps is necessary if planning is to be effective.\r\n\r\nThe project combines action net theory and sociological new institutionalism to show that planning can be conceptualized as the envisioning of actions aimed at building new nets of relations among actors and stabilizing these relations into action nets that stand for new behaviors.\r\n\r\nThe project rests on case studies and a series of interactive workshops where actors involved in waste prevention and researchers gather to identify obstacles to plan for waste prevention in order to better prevent gaps between planning and implementation.