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A wasted opportunity? Civil

society and waste management
in Ireland
a
Anna Davies
a
Trinity College Dublin ,
Published online: 22 Jan 2007.

To cite this article: Anna Davies (2007) A wasted opportunity? Civil society
and waste management in Ireland, Environmental Politics, 16:1, 52-72, DOI:
10.1080/09644010601073564

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 Environmental Politics,
Vol. 16, No. 1, 52 – 72, February 2007

A Wasted Opportunity? Civil Society

and Waste Management in Ireland
ANNA DAVIES
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Trinity College Dublin

ABSTRACT The management of Ireland’s household waste is a key environmental area

where systems of governance can be identified. However, while policy statements clearly
support public–private partnerships and have encouraged householders to modify their
waste management behaviour, civil society remains on the periphery of waste policy
development and implementation. Two contrasting areas of waste-related civil society
activities are examined to establish potential reasons for this marginalisation: community-
based recycling organisations and coalitions against the imposition of household waste
charges. The findings indicate that despite the different tactics used by these civil society
groupings similar contingent conditions serve to constrain their operation and the
development of future initiatives. So, while the existence of the three spheres of waste
governance is undeniable, significant imbalances remain between those spheres in terms of
policy influence.

Introduction
During the 1990s it became clear that Ireland was facing a waste crisis with
landfill sites rapidly reaching capacity, planning permission being granted for
controversial municipal solid waste incinerators and the imprisonment of
community activists and politicians opposing waste charges (Davies, 2003).
The crisis was not simply a technical one regarding the capacity of the state to
dispose of waste; it was also a crisis of governance.
Although there are intense and ongoing disagreements about how such
systems of governance function, it is commonly agreed that they involve
different scales (or tiers) of decision-making and different areas (or spheres) of
activity, including public and private sectors and civil society (Jessop, 1994;

Correspondence Address: Anna Davies, Department of Geography, School of Natural Sciences,

Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. Email: daviesa@tcd.ie
The research would not have been possible without: the Royal Irish Academy Third Sector
Research Programme Grant (2004–2006); the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social
Sciences Research Fellowship (2004–2005); Dimitrios Paraskevas who provided essential research
assistance; and the many interviewees who gave up their time to discuss their role in waste
management in Ireland. My sincere thanks go out to all these organisations and individuals.

ISSN 0964-4016 Print/1743-8934 Online/07/010052–21 Ó 2007 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/09644010601073564
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 53

O’Brien et al., 2000; Bulkeley et al., 2003). However, to date most attention
to, and research on, waste management in Ireland has focused on technical
issues related to the disposal of waste, which is dominated by the interests of
the private sector (EPA, 2005), and the higher echelons of governmental
decision-making, specifically analyses of national and EU public sector
machinations (Fagan et al., 2001; Boyle, 2002). While there is an emerging
body of literature on individual and household attitudes and actions in
relation to waste (Davies et al., 2005) civil society remains the Cinderella of
waste governance analysis. Policy documents, such as the 1996 Act (and its
amendments) (DoELG, 1996), the 1998 Changing Our Ways policy statement
(DoELG, 1998), and the Protection of the Environment Act (DoEHLG,
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2003), make no mention of this sphere of activity while media coverage of,
and political debate surrounding, waste issues make little reference to civil
society organisations beyond simplistic categorisations of them as selfish
NIMBYs, anti-development luddites, or political opportunists (Davies, 2003).
This neglect of civil society is surprising given the pivotal role governments,
both national and supra-national, have accorded to this sphere of governance
for attaining sustainable development (DoELG, 1997; CEC, 2001; Comhar,
2002), the positive impact that civil society organisations have had on waste
management in other countries (see Liss, 2001; Luckin & Sharp, 2003;
ZeroWaste NZ, 2003), and the strength of civil society organisation in other
areas of social life in Ireland (Connolly, 1997; O’Donovan & Ward, 1999). It
also appears to contradict the ‘social partnership’ model that has been in
operation in Ireland since 1987, where interest groups outside of elected
representatives play an active role in decision- and policy-making. However, it
was only in 1997 that community and voluntary organisations were first
included in national agreements and there are currently no environmental or
waste groups amongst the 15 that make up the community and voluntary
pillar of social partnership (Teague & Donaghey, 2004; Connolly & Lynch,
2005; Cox & Mullan, 2005). Despite this the community and voluntary pillar
has produced a scoping paper on waste management as part of the special
initiatives component of the 2003–05 Agreement ‘Sustaining Progress’
(DoEHLG, 2006). Although this document recognises a key role for
community and voluntary organisations in waste management, the interpre-
tation of that role is narrowly defined as their ‘‘on the ground’’ involvement
[which] has the potential to play an important part in securing greater local
acceptance of waste infrastructure’ (DoEHLG, 2006:4). As the case studies
described in this paper will show, to reduce the role of civil society to securing
local communities acceptance of waste infrastructure dictated by the public or
private sectors ignores a whole range of activities which civil society
organisations can and do engage in.
Given the essentially contested terrain surrounding the meaning of civil
society, it is important to state that it is understood in this paper to refer to the
set of institutions, organisations, and behaviour situated between the state, the
business world, and the family (CGG 1995; Gordenker & Weiss, 1996; Foster
 54 A. Davies

& Anand, 1999). Within this broad definition attention is paid to voluntary and
non-profit organisations concerned with the provision of waste management
services as well as social and political movements mobilised around waste
issues. Two contrasting areas of civil society organisation are considered:
community-based recycling organisations (CBROs) and coalitions of com-
munities against the imposition of refuse charges. CBROs are features of
waste management in many areas outside Ireland (Luckin & Sharp, 2003;
White & du Preez, 2005). Less familiar in the waste context are the kinds of
coalitions that developed in opposition to the introduction of charges at the
local authority level for waste collection and disposal in Dublin (and to a
lesser extent in other areas outside Dublin, such as Cork, Limerick, and
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Waterford). Such protests emerged in response to Ireland’s particular

political and economic environment, the taxation approaches adopted by
central government.
These two areas were selected from the range of civil society waste
activities currently occurring in Ireland, such as anti-incineration alliances,
zero-waste movements, and education programmes (see Harvey, 2002 and
Davies, 2005; Davies, 2006), for two main reasons. First, neither case has
received detailed attention from academic or policy research to date, and
second, the two cases differ not only in terms of their central focus – recycling
and charging mechanisms – but also in terms of the modes of operation they
have adopted in their engagement with other actors. While not providing
complete coverage of waste-related civil society activities, and further
empirical work clearly is needed here, the two cases are illustrative of the
different cultures of action (Klawiter, 1999) that civil society can adopt in
relation to waste, where cultures of action involve meanings, values, tacit
knowledge, and modes of behaviour. For example, the two case studies
illustrate how civil society activities can be complimentary to and colla-
borative with state activities, but they can also be antagonistic and
oppositional. The aim here is to consider the form and functioning of these
civil society organisations as a preliminary step towards understanding why,
even though adopting different tactics, they have yet to exert an overt
influence within waste management policy environments. As such this
research adds to recent debates about governance, civil society, and waste
management that have to date been dominated by empirical attention to the
US, UK, and other European countries (Davoudi, 2000; Bulkeley et al., 2005;
González & Healey, 2005; Moulaert & Ailenei, 2005) and confirms the need
for contextual sensitivity in analyses of civil society activities (Gerometta
et al., 2005; Swyngedouw, 2005).
The following section details the experiences of these two different forms of
waste-related civil society association. These experiences are then examined for
explanations as to why civil society remains on the margins of Irish waste
policy development. The concluding section reflects on the research findings in
terms of their implications for future studies of civil society and waste
governance in Ireland and beyond.
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 55

Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland

As reference to waste-related civil society organisations and movements in
Ireland is limited, both in waste policy documentation and academic literature,
alternative strategies for examining this sphere of activity were required. Media
coverage of waste conflicts provided a preliminary mechanism for selecting
examples of mobilised socio-political movements and communities, while a
combination of contacts with community organisations, internet searches, and
snowballing generated a list of voluntary and non-profit organisations involved
in waste issues. Representatives from the two case studies were contacted and
invited to participate in semi-structured interviews. Twenty interviews were
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conducted in total and all interviews were taped, transcribed, and coded.
Illustrative quotes are used in this section to enrich the analysis although the
identities of the interviewees are removed to preserve anonymity.

Community-Based Recycling Organisations (CBROs)

Community-based initiatives for resource recovery, reuse, and recycling were
included in the research because they have been identified as significant for
waste governance in certain countries, such as Wales and New Zealand, with
similar populations and waste issues (Welsh Assembly Government, 2002;
Ministry for the Environment, 2002). Civil society in this regard has been
defined as not-for-profit organisations concerned with the minimisation, reuse,
or recycling of waste (Luckin & Sharp, 2003). The first explicitly community-
based recycling organisation in Ireland was formed in 1995, in North Inner
City Dublin. The subsequent growth of this sector, however, has been
disappointing compared with the experience of other countries. There are no
accurate figures available on the exact number of CBROs in Ireland; however,
discussion with interviewees and community actors suggest that, excluding the
charity shop sector, only around 10 established and active CBROs exist. In
contrast there are now over 300 CBRO initiatives in the UK, linked through
the umbrella Community Recycling Network (CRN, 2003) and a similar scale
of expansion also occurred in New Zealand (Zero Waste NZ, 2003).
There is some discussion about whether charity shops such as St. Vincent de
Paul, Oxfam, or Enable Ireland should be included in the definition of CBROs.
Often charity shops do demonstrate elements of waste minimisation, although
these functions are rarely the central purpose of the operations. It was beyond
the scope of this paper to include all charity shops in the study and as a result
only one such organisation was interviewed, although further research in this
area is necessary.
Representatives from CBROs were asked about a range of issues, including
the aims and objectives of their organisation, the stimulus for their
organisation’s establishment, the nature of their organisational structures,
and the funding mechanisms accessed. They were also asked to evaluate their
activities and to comment on the challenges they face in achieving their aims
 56 A. Davies

and objectives. In particular the organisations were also asked to comment on

the relatively slow growth of the CBRO sector in Ireland.
Three motives – environmental protection, social development, and
economic vitality – were identified as the foundation for establishing CBROs.
It was this combination of goals that interviewees cited as the unique feature of
their organisations when compared to private and public sector operations and
the means through which they brought added value to waste management
activities. In the words of one interviewee:

It is an enterprise achieving sustainable development as it has an

economic, a social and an environmental role . . . The only differences
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with any other businesses are that the training of the staff gets subsidised
by the State, and that all profit is being put back into the development of
the organisation.

While not all participants invoked the language of sustainable development in

their explanation for establishing CBROs, there was a common commitment to
social, environmental, and economic objectives. Interestingly, in contrast to
other studies the majority of interviewees, when pressed, prioritised the
engagement with marginalised groups as their primary goal; to provide
participants with skills, training, and employment. There was less evidence of
an environmental ethos as a primary motivation for the CBROs as identified
by Luckin and Sharp (2003) in the UK and White and du Preez (2005) in New
Zealand. Related to this emphasis on community capacity-building was a
commitment to progressive support for marginalised sections of society. In
many cases the organisations portrayed their activities as more than simply a
safety net for people in difficult conditions:

Our philosophy is that providing training alone is not enough, and people
have to be let make their own decisions. Community development
through community empowerment is the best way forward.

Another area of similarity amongst the CBROs was their relatively small scale
when compared with the private sector waste companies operating in the
Republic. All the organisations, except the charity shop chain, fall within the Irish
Small Firms Association’s definition of a small business (50 employees or fewer)
and a number would be considered micro-enterprises (10 employees or fewer)
(Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, 2005). In each case the
management board of the organisation was made up of volunteers from the local
community and the majority of paid employees were funded through government
support schemes, such as Community Employment and Social Economy. FÁS
(Foras Áiseanna Saothair), Ireland’s training and employment authority,
administers these schemes, which are intended to provide the unemployed and
other disadvantaged groups with the opportunity to engage in useful work within
the community (WRC Social and Economic Consultants, 2003).
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 57

Despite the overall commonality in terms of motivation, funding mechan-

isms, size, and management structures, the interviews did reveal a diversity of
experiences amongst the groups with respect to work practices. This is perhaps
not surprising given the different histories and foci of the organisations. While
one organisation had been in operation for more than a decade, others were in
the first few years of activity and this affected the funding conditions under
which they operated. In terms of practice, some organisations collected and
sorted clothes for reuse, while others focused on a wider range of materials for
recycling. One organisation collected white goods from households and local
authorities, while another collected paper, card, and tin from community
groups, local small enterprises, and local authority offices. The organisations
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also differed in terms of the groups they sought to empower through training,
skills, and employment activities. Some organisations employed people with
different learning or physical abilities, others focused on people with
connections to drug use, while still others sought to provide opportunities
for the long-term unemployed. Nevertheless while the different contexts in
which the organisations operated did have an impact on the day-to-day
practices of the operations, the CBROs’ self-evaluation of organisational
functioning highlighted a number of similar experiences across organisations.
All groups felt they were adding value to waste management practices by
making social, environmental, and economical contributions. The social
benefits included community capacity-building through opportunities to
volunteer and through the provision of low-cost goods for local people in
need. Environmentally, the organisations felt they were making a tangible
contribution to reducing volumes of waste going to landfill by providing
services that both the private and public sectors were currently not supplying,
either in terms of flexibility of collections or materials being collected (though
few monitored quantitatively this contribution). Some organisations that dealt
with household goods also felt their practices helped improve local aesthetic
environmental quality by providing accessible and affordable alternatives to
fly-tipping. Economic contributions included employment opportunities and
skills acquisition. In one case an organisation had provided jobs for over 500
people during its ten-year existence. Less easy to quantify, but nonetheless
identified as important by the organisations, was what the interviewees termed
‘preventative benefits’ of the activities the CBROs undertook. Where CBROs
provided training and employment opportunities for vulnerable groups,
employers commented that their operations provided alternative life choices,
thus helping to prevent individuals turning to crime or drugs and becoming a
burden on the legal system. However, it was felt that these benefits were not
recognised by government, who were more concerned with short-term
economic outlay:

The government would rather build a recycling site than fund a com-
munity project because in the short term it would cost them half as
much, but the social benefits and the awareness raising are not
 58 A. Davies

quantified . . . There’s a terrible mistrust of the community sector. They

do not see us as professional but rather as do-gooders.

The difficulty of measuring qualitative or preventative benefits of CBRO

activity was identified across the board as being a major hindrance to
generating greater support from government, but there were a range of other
issues that CBROs talked about in terms of obstacles, challenges, or barriers to
their activities and to the expansion of CBRO activity within Ireland. In
addition to the limited funding sources (and limited funds), the organisations
talked about poor relationships with central and local governments, weak
linkages with other community organisations, the dominance of large, private
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sector operations in the field of recycling, and their lack of status with both
public and private sector actors. While many of these issues might be familiar
to civil society organisations in other fields, the CBROs felt that they were in a
particularly vulnerable position because of their location on the interface of
environmental, economic, and social concerns. In contrast to the policy
statements emanating from Northern Ireland and Scotland for ‘green jobs’
(Barry, 2004; Scottish Executive, 2005), there is as yet no explicit strategy for
encouraging similar enterprises in the Republic. Indeed, the organisations
interviewed felt that being involved in all activities of the triple bottom line of
sustainable development was a disadvantage:

The Department for the Environment would not give us the money . . .
they told us we’d come to the wrong place . . . they did not see it as part of
their role. . . . Community developers see recycling as part of waste
management and that’s the local authority’s job, and local authorities do
not see it as their responsibility to provide jobs for long-term unemployed
people.

The lack of support from the Department of the Environment was seen as a
hugely constraining factor for CBROs. Many organisations felt this lack of
engagement with the civil society sector was unwarranted when recent
legislative developments, such as the landfill and plastic bag taxes, were
providing increasing revenue for the department. However, the launch of the
Rural Social Scheme by the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht
Affairs in 2004 has been identified as a potential source of support for CBROs
in rural areas (Buchanan et al., 2004). The enforced reliance on a few funding
sources that are subject to the vagaries of central government budgetary
changes and particular funding criteria can create an environment of insecurity
and dependency for CBROs that has been allied to concerns about de-
radicalisation and co-option of civil society activities (see Anheier et al., 1996):

If I was to start this [operation] now I would not get FÁS money. And
without that money we would not have been here in the first
place . . . there isn’t anybody pushing for it. There is not a community
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 59

recycling network in Ireland and community groups do not seem to

realise recycling’s potential as a viable alternative to other jobs.

This last quote illustrates the recognition among certain CBROs of their own
responsibility for generating support for community-based recycling activity.
For while they were critical of Government for the minimal support they
received (through the FÁS schemes), a number acknowledged that they should
be more proactive in lobbying for change and demonstrating the benefits of
their operations to society as a whole. The challenge in this regard is how
organisations, already working at capacity to simply sustain their activities,
might allocate precious time and resources to creating a groundswell of support
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for greater recognition, or to search for alternative funds.

A striking feature of the CBROs in comparison to the anti-bin tax
campaigns that will be addressed in the following section is the lack of
politicisation amongst the CBRO representatives who were interviewed. The
representatives of the organisations often saw themselves as working for local
communities, but rarely were they interested in engaging with local politics,
political parties, or political actions. Only in one case was a CBRO
representative actively participating in local authority decision-making
structures and that was in a community development capacity rather than as
someone dealing with waste issues. This is despite the support of the Green
Party, whose waste policy adheres to the notion of zero waste and encourages
communities to take ‘advantage of subsidies and grants for the establishment
of small-scale community-based recycling enterprises and participat[e] as
community representatives in all key policy and decision-making bodies in the
area of waste’ (Green Party, 2004). The Green Party’s vision of zero waste
depends on the creation of smaller scale, decentralised industries that promote
civic participation and job creation. Alongside the Green Party’s apparent
support for CBROs, Zero Waste Alliance Ireland (ZWAI), a not-for-profit
organisation established in 1999 from an alliance between anti-landfill and
anti-incineration groups, also has within its mission statement a commitment
to job creation and civic participation in community projects for resource
management. However, none of the interviewees from CBROs in this research
made any connection between their operations and the activities of either the
Green Party or ZWAI.

Anti-Bin Tax Coalitions in Dublin

The introduction of waste charges caused a major outcry amongst certain
communities in Dublin during 2003, culminating in a series of protests in and
around the city. Although there were also protests in a number of locations
around Ireland the scale of the campaigns within Dublin far exceeded those
elsewhere. Twenty-two people were jailed and many others were fined for their
participation in events such as blockading refuse trucks and preventing waste
collection services. While members of local communities were certainly
 60 A. Davies

involved in the direct action, there was also significant participation of political
parties in the civil disobedience. Organisations such as the Irish Socialist
Network and political groups including the Socialist Party, Sinn Féin, and the
Socialist Workers Party were centrally involved in coordinating activities in
many communities. This mobilisation caused a blurring of boundaries between
civil society and political organisation and an entanglement of community
groups with radical political parties. As such this case provides a stark contrast
to the activities previously described in relation to CBROs, where there was no
overt participation of political parties.
While it was during 2003 that the anti-bin tax campaigns came to public
attention, through media coverage of direct action events and the high profile
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jailing of local residents and campaigners, resistance to the charges had been in
existence since 2000. Since this time, a significant number of people in locations
throughout the Dublin region had not been paying their waste charges from
the local authorities, although the exact numbers of non-compliant households
is disputed. However, it was in 2003 that local authorities threatened non-
collection of waste from those households who had failed to pay their waste
charge bills. This threat of non-collection was carried out in Fingal (a county to
the North of Dublin that is part of the Dublin Regional Waste Plan) and
communities organised in protest against this. Collection depots were picketed
and strategies of resistance were enacted to subvert the non-collection of waste.
Some communities followed bin lorries and put the non-collected waste into
the trucks, others sought to prevent collection of all waste from certain areas,
while still others pooled resources to remove waste to local civic amenity sites.
The cumulative effect of these actions was to cause massive disruption to waste
services for many weeks. It was during these more confrontational moments of
resistance that community activists were arrested for impeding the waste
collection. On appearing in court, 22 of these activists were jailed for contempt
because of their refusal to assure the judge that they would not obstruct future
waste collections.
While the more radical left-wing parties and Sinn Féin actively supported the
anti-bin tax campaigns, the Green Party along with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael
all supported the principle of waste charges. The Labour Party was officially
opposed to the flat-rate charges prevalent prior to 2005, but the party did not
support the anti-bin tax campaigns and did not advise householders to
withhold payment of the charge (Leahy, 2003). The class lines in the anti-bin
tax debate are clear and noted by one Green Party TD: ‘I’m not hearing a great
deal about it [the bin tax], but my area in Dun Laoghaire is one of the most
affluent constituencies in the country. I think it’s areas like Crumlin and Artane
[working-class areas] that are really upset about it’ (in Leahy, 2003). This
stance of the Green Party in supporting the principle of waste charges while
opposing a flat-rate charge was taken by the independent media as a
reaffirmation of the middle-class credentials of the party in Ireland, as can
be seen in the coverage of the issue entitled ‘The Greens: Waging Class War On
Behalf Of The Rich’ (Indymedia, 2003).
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 61

The core sites of the protests were primarily areas of the city and suburbs
that would have been considered traditionally working class, and the key
concern expressed in these areas was with the taxation system in Ireland. In
Ireland taxation for workers comes through a pay as you earn (PAYE) scheme
collected by central government, who then distributes the funds to local
authorities through capital grants. The perception was that the taxation
strategies of central government prioritise big business interests through tax
breaks and low corporation tax (Sweeney, 2004), while placing a double
burden on people working on low wages through the imposition of local service
charges on top of the PAYE contributions. Waste charges had been phased in
in other locations across Ireland over a number of years with little organised
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resistance from those communities (although Cork, Limerick, and Waterford

did see smaller scale protests) and by 2000 Dublin was one of the last areas
without them. There are two potential explanations for this divergence in the
extent of protest against the bin charges across Ireland. The first relates to the
political geography of the far-left political groupings in Ireland that are
concentrated in working-class areas of Dublin. The far-left political groupings
in Dublin had also successfully campaigned against local water charges, which
were introduced in the mid-1990s, and they used this experience to mobilise the
communities once more against the bin tax. The second is the gradual
imposition of waste charges across the country at different rates inhibiting the
development of a coordinated response.
Local authorities claimed the charges were needed as an environmental
incentive and to communicate to householders the real costs of disposing of
waste, which had been heavily subsidised for many years. However, prior to
2005 most charges imposed in the Dublin region were set on a flat level with no
sliding scale to reflect the amount of waste that households were putting out for
disposal or the amount of recycling that was being undertaken. Subsequently,
when a number of individuals have been taken to court for their continuing
non-payment of waste charges the judge found against Dublin City Council
because it had not provided any incentive to the individual to recycle waste and
therefore reduce the amount of charges paid. This was seen to be in breach of
the local authorities waste management plan and in contravention of the
polluter pays principle. Anti-bin tax campaigners’ celebrations at this success
were brief, however, as the council made a statement that the judge’s finding
did not render all non-payment cases void and that they would be following
through each case on an individual basis. Since January 2005 all local
authorities have been required to bring in a pay-by-weight or -volume method
of collecting waste. Again, bin-tax campaigners claimed this move as a direct
result of their protests that forced government to consider its environmental
obligations and the fairness of its mechanisms for providing local services.
A variety of activists from different areas of the city and suburbs were
interviewed about their role in the anti-bin tax campaigns. The aim was to
include individuals who reflected the diversity of the participants in the Dublin
campaigns. To this end people who were members of different political parties
 62 A. Davies

and those who were not affiliated to any party were interviewed. As with the
interviews with the CBROs they were asked to explain their motivations for
participation and the tactics adopted in the campaign, to reflect on the
strategies they adopted and consider the impact of their campaign on wider
waste governance activities.
Justice arguments were prevalent throughout discussions of the waste
charges and without exception the interviewees cited the need for systems of
taxation in society that did not penalise those people who were least able to
pay. Although the campaigners said that they had not been motivated initially
because of concern that the charges did not support the polluter pays principle,
most interviewees were keen to demonstrate that they were concerned broadly
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with the quality of life in the areas where campaigns were occurring and by
implication this included the environment as well as justice issues:

We want to see a clean and fair society . . . we do clean-ups in our own

area and we work on the council; we organise a whole day, there’s one
coming up, and we’ll go round the whole estate and clean up everything.

Interviewees felt particularly strongly that the local authorities had adopted a
kind of ‘greenwashing’ (Rowell, 1996; Beder, 1997) in the defence of their
taxes, claiming environmental credentials without concomitant developments
in recycling infrastructure and services.
The strategy of protesters was to reveal what they felt was a mismatch
between rhetoric and reality in local authority service provision through an
information campaign for local residents in order to generate mass mobilisa-
tion of non-payment amongst communities:

The main strategy of the campaign was to put up the membership, get
people involved in the campaign . . . there were many blockades and the
bin men supported us well . . . the idea would be to create a crisis and put
the issue on the agenda.

The tactics adopted in different communities of non-payment, blockading, and

picketing were controversial even amongst those who were against the principle
of the waste charges, but key actors in the campaign felt that they had been
given no alternative:

The Secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions said we shouldn’t be on

the streets, that it’s not the way to challenge the whole concept, but yet he
wasn’t offering any alternatives. . . . What the campaign was doing was
trying to pull all those elements together and play a collective role.

The reference to the collective role is significant here. As with the CBROs, one
of the commonly stated aims of the anti-bin tax campaigners was the
empowerment of the communities in which they lived and were operating. The
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 63

politicisation of people in the communities who would not normally participate

in any form of action, formal or informal, legal or illegal was seen as a great
success of the campaigns. This support by radical activists familiar with politics
and legal processes provided a solid basis on which individuals less accustomed
to engaging with such frameworks could build. Although the organised
political involvement was criticised by some commentators as exploiting
communities for personal political gain, it is likely that the community groups
would not have had the same confidence to challenge the legality of legislative
intent or the implementation of government policy without the political
experience of these parties.
While some interviewees were uncomfortable with civil disobedience, others
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stated that the reaction by the police and the courts to the acts of resistance had
given the campaigns a useful media profile. A number felt that the public
attention to the issue justified the actions and that the punishment of the
protestors through the courts merely served to generate more support for their
campaign:

Right or wrong, at least this way it would get media attention and have
somebody sit down and make up their own mind about what was going
on . . . why did the government want 16 policemen looking at me? They
obviously wanted to intimidate us and show to other people that they
cannot go out and make a difference.

Overall the campaigners claimed that their actions had been vindicated by the
wide support they received from within their local communities, by the change
to central government legislation for waste-charging mechanisms, and finally
through the success of individual cases that had been won by campaigners in
the courts. In addition the campaigners emphasised their role in demonstrating
a democratic right to oppose government. In this way, like CBROs the anti-bin
tax campaign sought to build a sense of community empowerment and active
participation in policy circles and the anti-bin tax protestors also functioned to
act as a watchdog for legislative development and implementation.
However, the lack of engagement with waste debates on a broader scale and
with sympathetic waste and environmental groups was identified as a weakness
of the protests by some interviewees. Even though the Green Party was
opposed to the flat-rate waste-charging mechanisms that were in place in 2003,
there was little common constituency between Green Party members and the
local communities that were active in their opposition to the charges. Instead of
seeking connections over areas of commonality with political parties such as
the Green Party or with groups such as the ZWAI, who in a press release
stated: ‘that the present system of waste disposal charges for households in
Ireland is unfair and contrary to the principles of sustainable development and
environmental justice’ (ZWAI, 2006), the public statements by anti-bin tax
campaigners focused on short-term economic issues of tax. One campaigner
noted that the coordinators of the protests felt that communities opposing the
 64 A. Davies

bin tax would find little resonance with environmental arguments, but he felt
the resulting approach allowed the media to dismiss them as ‘environmental
luddites’.
The future for the anti-bin tax campaigns in Dublin is unclear. The groups
are still operating in various locations, although actions tend to occur only
when a threat of court action against an individual emerges. The new system
introduced in 2005, of charging according to weight or volumes of waste put
out for collection, means that the case for future non-payment on the grounds
of the polluter pays principle seems weakened, although campaigners argue
that the continued use of a flat-tax element to most of the new charging
mechanisms means that the double taxation case still stands.
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Summary
The case studies demonstrate the existence of civil society organisation with
respect to waste issues in Ireland and the main dimensions of their activities are
summarised in Table 1. This summary indicates the diversity between the
cultures of action of civil society (Klawiter, 1999) yet there are also areas of
commonality. For while both CBROs and the anti-bin tax campaigners might
have a low profile in policy documentation and decision-making environments,
the evidence provided by interviewees suggests that these groups do inhabit a
terrain from which socially transformative action can emerge and where social
power relations may be contested and struggled over (Swyngedouw, 2005).
The CBROs have provided additional opportunities for recycling, reusing,
and reducing waste materials that complement and extend public and private
sector service provision. They have engaged local communities in activities that
raise awareness of positive waste management techniques, provided opportu-
nities for volunteering and community capacity-building, providing low-cost
and sustainable products for communities. While they do not participate in the
overtly confrontational activities of the anti-bin tax protestors, CBROs are
attempting to challenge existing relationships between waste and society. This
is all in addition to the economic opportunities they have provided for those
normally marginalised from employment. The CBROs are proactive organisa-
tions with a long-term commitment to supporting marginalised sectors of
communities and the wider community in terms of sustainable waste
management. Nevertheless, despite these benefits, the sector remains small
and at the margins of policy-making. This is in contrast to similar
organisations elsewhere. Clych, for example, the community recycling umbrella
organisation in Wales, is a key participant in the waste policy community
(http://www.clych.co.uk). They are held in high regard in the Welsh Assembly,
sit on the forum for the development of the Welsh Waste Strategy (Welsh
Assembly Government, 2002), and have access to significant funds through the
landfill tax credit scheme. Clych’s position is, however, assisted by the statutory
duty of the Welsh Assembly to promote sustainable development (Williams &
Thomas, 2004), which does not exist within the Republic.

Motivation for action
Characteristics of activities
Dominant funding source
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Table 1. Summary of CBRO and anti-bin tax activity
Community-based resource organisations
. Proactive initiatives for sustainable waste
management
. Strengthening of social economy
. Encouraging community capacity-building
. Formal participation in government funding
schemes (e.g. FÁS Community Employment
and Social Economy)
. Small-scale individual operations
. Weakly networked with other CBROs
. Limited links with other local community
groups
. Weak interaction with other civil society
organisations
. Providing alternative solutions for waste
management using non-confrontational tactics
. Predominantly apolitical operations
. Government schemes (e.g. FÁS Community
Employment and Social Economy)
Anti-bin tax coalitions
. Reactive campaign against waste-charging
mechanisms
. Social justice
. Political empowerment for marginalised
communities
. Confrontational direct action and civil
disobedience (mass mobilisation through
non-payment of waste charges)
. Community mobilisation through newsletters,
fundraising events, and public meetings
. Strong pockets of resistance in specific
communities (mostly traditional working-class
areas)
. Limited networking between sites of resistance
. Weak interaction with other areas of
waste-related civil society and wider civil
society groups
. High level of interaction with left-wing/
independent political organisations and
individuals
. Private donations (e.g. through community
fundraising initiatives)
(continued)
Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland
65
 Downloaded by [University of Strathclyde] at 08:53 17 October 2014
Table 1. (Continued)
Community-based resource organisations
Impacts Policy . Minimal acknowledgement of CBRO’s
potential contribution to waste management at
a national level (except for Green Party waste
policy statement 2004)
. Reductions in funding opportunities for
CBROs from central government
. Limited and transient partnerships with local
authorities
Environment . Additional opportunities for diversion of a
wider range of recyclables from landfill
Economy . Provision of training, skills, and employment
particularly for marginalised groups
Society . Community capacity-building, volunteering
opportunities
66
A. Davies
Anti-bin tax coalitions
. Introduction of pay-by-weight or use
mechanisms
. Isolated threat of non-collection for
non-payment of charges by certain local
authorities
. Individual cases of non-compliance taken to
courts by local authorities
. Small increases in awareness of waste issues in
certain working-class communities
. Increased political empowerment of certain
working-class communities
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 67

Anti-bin tax campaigners, in contrast, are part of a more reactive

organisation in the waste arena (although they could be seen as proactively
campaigning for social justice in the taxation system). While opposing the
current bin tax systems, they have not presented a considered alternative for
managing waste more effectively; rather they have sought to bring attention to
the negative implications of the current taxation arrangements for household
waste. On this narrow and immediate issue they have been successful in
mobilising large numbers of people to oppose systems of charging for waste,
and through this collective action they have provided participants with more
awareness of the mechanisms of government that they reside under and the
rights they have to challenge those mechanisms.
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In effect, the two areas of waste-related civil society organisations dealt with
here are acting in three main ways: as agents of change (proactive and reactive)
offering practical alternatives to waste problems or challenging government
policy and forcing changes through protest and debate; as watchdogs of public
and private activities, engaging with legislative practices at a range of scales;
and as conduits of information for local communities and other community
groups about alternative waste practices or concerning waste taxation systems.
Despite these roles the influence of civil society activities in Ireland’s waste
management is still limited. The following section considers reasons for this
ongoing marginalisation of civil society activities in waste management.

The Marginalisation of Waste-Related Civil Society

The interviews with both case study arenas of waste-related civil society action
revealed a range of constraints on activities that account for the current
marginalisation of civil society from policy-making circles. Although there
were differences within and between the two case studies in terms of emphasis,
four common factors were identified as being the most debilitating: a lack of
funding and resources; low status; limited access to policy-making environ-
ments; isolation from other elements of civil society. These factors interact to
compound the conditions of constraint in which civil society groups involved in
waste issues operate, making it difficult to ‘accumulate significant power to
alter the dominant governance cultures in which they find themselves’
(González & Healy, 2005: 2066).
The CBROs and the anti-bin tax protestors identified both human and
financial resource problems as a restrictive force on their operations. For
CBROs the problem was seen as one of a lack of resources available either
from the state, the private sector, or charitable organisations to support their
activities on a daily basis; to compound matters, even when finance was
available the conditions attached to the money were often felt to be onerous.
For the anti-bin tax campaigners the problem was raising funds to support
marches, demonstrations, and newsletters as well as supporting people through
court cases in communities where people were already on low incomes. While
the anti-bin tax protestors did not need the steady commitment of people or
 68 A. Davies

finances on a daily basis, they were asking for people, often with limited
resources, to participate in activities that could lead to a confrontation with the
legal system. In both cases the groups felt that this lack of financial clout
contributed to the perception in public and private sectors that their operations
or activities were insignificant.
The difficulty civil society groups encountered in attempting to communicate
their total contribution to society as well as practical waste management
compounded feelings of low status within the decision-making apparatus of
government. Again, this manifested itself in different ways between the two
cases. Amongst the CBROs there was a view that government was wedded to
simple economic cost-effectiveness in managing waste and that the added
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social, economic, and environmental benefits of their activities were not

appreciated. Within the anti-bin tax campaign the protesters clearly articulated
their concern for political empowerment of marginalised low-income groups
within the city, but the identification of the protests with predominantly left-
wing political groups meant that their broader messages about justice and
equity could be dismissed by the larger, more mainstream parties and messages
failed to engage with broader publics.
Without a clear line of access to policy-making or a voice in policy
deliberations, it is unsurprising that the groups all talked about a sense of
isolation that hindered their activities. The lack of a nationwide umbrella lobby
organisation for CBROs was mentioned by many of the interviewees who felt
that they could benefit from up-scaling their voice in policy circles and from
being better engaged with similar organisations around the country to
disseminate good practice and share experiences. This concern was less
dominant amongst the anti-bin tax campaigners because they were focused
very much on grassroots communities, in some cases even streets, but at the
same time many of the community campaigns benefited (at least in an
organisational sense) from the participation of national (if small) political
parties. Despite this, the anti-bin tax protests failed to link up with other waste-
related initiatives, such as CBROs, ZWAI, or anti-incineration campaigns
(Davies, 2005), even though there is common ground between the spheres of
activity in terms of equity and justice arguments over the distribution of costs
and benefits in relation to waste management. While some interviewees
suggested that this isolation was the result of a narrowness of vision amongst
some of the bin-tax activists who focused on structural economic issues
(taxation) to the exclusion of wider societal concerns, it could also be attributed
to the lack of resonance that environmental justice discourses currently have in
Ireland (Davies, 2006).

Conclusion
The research has identified divergent responses to the constraints commonly
experienced across the two areas of civil society organisation. The CBROs are
continuing their activities without much direct challenge to the status quo at
 Civil Society and Waste Management in Ireland 69

least in terms of funding and organisation, while the anti-bin tax campaigners
have adopted an overtly confrontational approach that forces political and
legal attention to their actions. The anti-bin tax campaigners have built
support based within a number of predominantly working-class communities
and they are willing to undertake direct action and civil disobedience to create
controversy around their debates.
The different tactics have led to divergent reactions from the state to the two
areas of civil society action. In the case of the CBROs the current inability to
develop a national-level organisation to represent the interests of the local,
small-scale operations and an aversion to confrontational tactics allied to a
generally apolitical stance adopted by these organisations has not forced
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public, media, or political attention to their activities. In contrast, when

challenges to decisions or policy have been overt, such as in the bin-tax
protests, high-profile conflicts have been played out on the streets, in the media,
and in the courtroom. Although causal links between this visible activism and
policy change are difficult to make, the media and public attention has placed
policy practices under greater scrutiny. In particular, although contested by
government, the anti-bin tax campaigners would say they were pivotal to the
changes in waste-charging mechanisms. Nonetheless, despite the attempts by
anti-bin tax protesters to get political power through standing in local
elections, they remain marginal in the development or implementation of waste
policy. In fact, the state has tended to react negatively and defensively when
faced with dissent from civil society organisations. The defensive reaction of
the state to resistance has been linked by some commentators to the effects of
the corporatist social partnership model of democracy that evolved in Ireland
during times of economic hardship in the 1980s and 1990s, which it is suggested
led to the co-option of civil society and fostered an intolerance towards dissent
in dominant political culture (Teague & Donaghey, 2004; Connolly & Lynch,
2005; Cox & Mullan, 2005).
That divergent tactics exist between the two areas of waste-related civil
society actions is perhaps not surprising given the different interests and
motivations of the mobilising forces (the community or political activists in the
anti-bin tax case and the directors and management boards of the CBROs) and
the different constituencies that those forces seek to engage with. Of course,
civil society is not a homogeneous entity nor should it be expected that the
organisations within it will be, or want to be, unified, as ‘the ability to act in the
public sphere is distributed unevenly among different segments of the overall
civil society’ (Gerometta et al., 2005: 2018). However, given the constraints on
their activities, waste-related civil society groupings in Ireland, as with such
groupings elsewhere, may need to ‘combine energetic efforts aimed at
immediate targets with strategic attention to ways of affecting the wider
governance culture’ (González & Healey, 2005: 2066). This is particularly
important given the dynamics of waste governance in Ireland, shaped by supra-
national Directives from the EU and centralised policy-making structures that
construct the local scale as predominantly a site of policy implementation
 70 A. Davies

rather than innovation. It is possible, with commitment and resources, for

waste-related civil society groups to build a national base for their activities, if
they are able to draw together associations with widely differing political
positions and communities with diverse socio-economic constituents. They
would also have to draw influence from other arenas of civil society in Ireland,
creating a pincer movement that links exogenous forces with local initiatives.
For even though the chances for success when civil society mobilises against
dominant economic interests and mainstream political parties are unpredict-
able (Fainstein & Hirst, 1995), there remain spaces for resistance, or what
Amin and Thrift (2002) see as possibilities for alternative practices to become
insurgent forces.
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In conclusion, this research has begun to unravel the complexity of

relationships between the spheres of waste governance by more clearly defining
the relative influence of civil society in relation to the public and private
sectors. It has also made apparent that while governance rather than simple
government does shape waste policy outcomes, the balance of power, in
Ireland at least, serves to marginalise the civil society sector. A detailed analysis
is now required of the strategies and expanding role of the private sector in
Ireland’s waste governance landscape in the light of persisting EU attention to
the waste stream and a public sector apparently unsympathetic to civil society
and intent on developing greater privatisation through public–private partner-
ships. Such analysis is required not only for those interested in Ireland’s
management of waste but also for those concerned with the formation of waste
governance and policy formation within Europe.

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