Introduction

How can citizens best be persuaded to separate household waste at source? The Dutch municipality of Hengelo has attempted to find multiple answers to this vexing question. It is acknowledged that separating household waste at the source and reducing waste generation are essential steps in efforts to restructure the economy to make it a circular one (Williams 2019) and that to achieve this municipalities need the participation of citizens. The municipality of Hengelo has been a pioneer in finding creative solutions to waste collection, but these local government initiatives have received a mixed response by the residents. The presenter of a Dutch current affairs programme, Een Vandaag, introduced the local issue to the national TV audience with the ominous sentence: ‘If people anywhere are angry about the waste policies of their municipality, it is in Hengelo’. She continued that before long ‘a true waste-revolt will erupt in this town’ (Een Vandaag 2018).

Emotions did indeed run high. Alderman Bas van Wakeren, responsible for the municipal solid waste management, was one among several officials physically threatened (TC Tubantia, 7-9-2018). A survey conducted among the electorate by the regional newspaper signalled that the municipal household waste management was considered the most important topic in the 2018 municipal elections (TC Tubantia, 20-2-2018). While according to high-ranking civil servants we interviewed, 60–90 per cent of the Hengelo citizenry accepted the municipal policies, a sizable proportion did reject them.

What were the new policies which angered the citizens? Until 2012, Hengelo operated what is still the most common waste collection system in the Netherlands. Mixed waste was collected in grey mini-containers by households and picked up by municipal garbage trucks going from door to door every fortnight. Residents of low-rise buildings had separate containers for organic waste, and from 2008, PMD (plastic, metal, drink cartons) waste was collected separately, but this was voluntary and included in the same flat tariff. In 2012, however, the municipality introduced diftar (differentiated tariffs): Residents were charged every time they had their grey mini-container emptied. In 2018, the municipality also introduced reversed collecting; henceforward, recyclable PMD and organic waste were collected from door to door at a flat rate but people were responsible for bringing their residual waste to underground neighbourhood containers themselves. Residents felt doubly hard done by: not only did they have to carry the residual waste farther from home, but also to add insult to injury, payment was docked at the neighbourhood container every time they deposited a rubbish bag.

In the municipal elections of March 2022, waste management still loomed large as a major issue, although by now the emphasis had shifted to the issue of littering by people who shunned diftar and reversed collection. In a public debate, waste was the first of three topics discussed by local politicians who were asked to react to the proposition: ‘We must switch to post-collection separation [as before], because the city is being turned into one big dunghill under the current policy’. A few leftist parties defended the current policy but most parties wanted a return to door-to-door collection of mixed waste in grey mini-containers by the municipality and a move towards post-collection separation. One participant in the debate venomously asked: ‘Is diftar a kind of religion?’Footnote 1 Although we do not know the reasons the electorate voted for particular parties, it is telling that Pro Hengelo, the party of Alderman Bas van Wakeren, was the biggest loser (from 14.8 to 6.7% of the votes) and BurgerBelangen, champion of abolishing diftar and reversed collection, came out first (from 7.4 to 16.4% of the votes).Footnote 2

The first aim of this article is to take a critical look at the amazing width of the whole range of municipal policies to separate household waste at source, which entails more effort than diftar and reversed collection. These policies can be conceptualized as a form of service co-production. The second aim is to analyse the various citizens’ reactions to the municipal initiatives, in particular those of those people who reject the policies. The third aim is to scrutinize the reasons why municipal responses to these reactions have partly remained without success.

Commencing from the premise that most people in the Netherlands agree that separation at the source is important in waste management and good for the environment, the central question addressed is why, nevertheless, the participation of citizens did not follow the path intended by the policy makers and how a sizeable minority of people in Hengelo is resisting. We argue that the municipal gut reaction that the recalcitrants do not understand rational arguments misses the point and will not encourage compliance with the municipal efforts to separate waste at source. We make a plea for what we would like to call ‘modest governance’: an attitude of politicians and professional civil servants that they do not necessarily know better than citizens and are willing to accept alternative interpretations of the issue at stake.

Methodology and data analysis

Method and data collection

Our analysis is based on three months’ ethnographic fieldwork, including (participant) observation at hotspots of municipal waste management initiatives and interviews with various categories of citizens (October–December 2018) by one of us (Jordi Bok). We held fifteen recorded interviews with citizens and nineteen other conversations with citizens, on sites of waste collection, of which the transcripts are based on notes taken during the talks (Appendix 1). Of course there were countless more short talks during the participant observation. We had ten very long talks with people working in waste collection, like people driving food bikes, waste coaches, and janitors, while we joined them doing their work; parts of these ongoing conversations during the day were recorded too. Additional fieldwork was conducted in January 2021 to see how one of the initiatives, the food bike project, had fared during the Corona lockdown. We also conducted six interviews with the alderman and top civil servants in the municipal administration responsible for the municipal solid waste management. To widen our catchment area, we also scanned the online regional daily, TC Tubantia, which has regularly published on waste management, and we consulted a published survey (Mulder et al. 2020) and municipal documents. Finally, we were repeatedly contacted by the most vocal opponent of the municipal policies who, on his own initiative, provided us with what was in his view ‘the right information’ to counter municipal ‘misinformation’, through five phone calls and additional emails. Interestingly, the municipality has also tried to mobilize our support for its case, asking us to speak to the regional TV station about the ‘pioneering approach’ of the Hengelo administration.

Data analysis

The researchers analysed the transcripts and field notes independent from each other using content analysis to decide on the central themes. The analysis was partly done during the main period of data collection to sensitize the fieldworker for emergent themes to focus on, and partly after the main fieldwork was completed. Possible disagreements about themes were resolved by discussion. The analysis continued into the writing phase, because it is usually in the composition of coherent paragraphs that the analysis of qualitative data is completed. The manuscript has gone back and forth between the researchers to the point that it would no longer be possible to distinguish which author wrote which paragraph.

Waste collection as service co-production

The reversed collection and diftar can be theoretically framed as an example of ‘service co-production’ (Brix et al. 2020), active citizenship (Boutellier 2014), public engagement (Bartoletti & Faccioli 2016) and collaboration in public service delivery (Kekez et al. 2019). In ‘service co-production’, the role of citizens has changed from merely subjects of the state or customers to co-producers of services (Brix et al. 2020; Boutellier 2014). The idea of the involvement of citizens in public service delivery as a manifestation of New Public Governance gained popularity at a time in which austerity measures were being imposed by neoliberal governments, public investment by the state diminished and market-based modes of service delivery also proved either less efficient than expected or not accountable to the public (Kekez et al. 2019; Kleinhans 2017; Park 2020; Schneider 2021). The concept of service co-production is known in the Netherlands as the participatiesamenleving or ‘participation society’ (Salemink and Strijker 2018).

Scholars have been debating the question of to what extent citizens have truly become co-producers. Dimitris Dalakoglou’s main line of thought is citizens replacing the state (especially in the provision of soft infrastructures, such as hosting refugees) (Dalakoglou 2016; see also Mescoli & Roblain 2021), but, in the case of waste management in Hengelo, the local government clearly remains involved. Justus Uitermark (2015) makes the point that a ‘self-organization’ discourse still promotes top-down management which merely exploits the ideal of self-governance. In the same vein, Willem Trommel speaks of a ‘greedy government’ in the Netherlands which, bent on self-preservation, with one hand takes back tasks which it has just given with the other (Trommel 2013; see also Brandsen et al. 2017; Bisschops & Beunen 2019; Kleinhans 2017). The waste management reforms in Hengelo are better explained by the view that local government is not truly committed to the delegation of power and responsibilities to citizens.

Waste management differs from the usual subjects of co-production or self-organization, like health care, social services and urban planning, because of its down-to-earth and technical character; the personal preferences of citizens are irrelevant to the matter of whether a certain material (organic waste, particular kinds of plastics) is recyclable or not. In this light citizens doing the separation work tend to be seen as a ‘resource’ by governments (Brix et al. 2020, p. 169) rather than as co-producers. There are no two ways about it, citizens simply have to do the work of sorting out waste into recyclables and residual waste. However, when the contribution of citizens is far from voluntary, it might be more apt to speak of ‘coerced engagement’ or ‘compulsory engagement’ (Park 2020, p. 457) instead of service co-production.

Sunggeun Park has rightly observed that there is ‘a lack of discussion on how the tensions that may arise between service providers and users may influence engagement and collaboration processes’. He continues that the ‘innate power imbalances and tensions’ between service providers and service users have rarely been explored (Park 2020, p. 453). Our article aims to contribute to filling this gap in our understanding of co-production.

Results and discussion

Mapping the waste flows as imagined by the municipality

The city of Hengelo (81,000 inhabitants on 1 January 2022)Footnote 3 is by Dutch standards a middle-sized city in the region of Twente (province of Overijssel), near the eastern border of the Netherlands with Germany. The municipalities of Twente share some waste treatment facilities, but are autonomous in the development of waste management policies. Although Hengelo is not the largest city of the region, it has the reputation of being the most innovative in waste management. Hengelo aims at reducing the residual solid waste to 50 kg per person per year by 2030,Footnote 4 a policy which aligns with the European Union target of recycling 65 percent of household waste by 2035 (European Commission 2018).

Step by step over the years, Hengelo has introduced new forms of waste collection. Hengelo as the first municipality in the region began the separate collection of PMD waste in 2008. Before 2008, it only separated organic from residual waste in green and grey mini-containers of 140 or 240 L. The colour green is associated with organic and being good for the environment. The grey and green mini-containers were emptied alternatingly every fortnight by garbage trucks of the regional waste collection company Twente Milieu (in which the municipalities of Twente are the only shareholders). People living in high-rise buildings never have had mini-containers, but have had to take their waste, including organic waste, to neighbourhood containers.

In 2008, as a first step towards separating household waste better at the source, the municipality began to collect PMD in transparent plastic bags, which were picked up by the waste collection company Twente Milieu on specific dates. In 2016, the plastic bags were replaced by orange mini-containers for people in low-rise buildings; thereafter, people in high-rise buildings had to bring their PMD waste to communal containers, which were free to use.

An important step in the separation of more kinds of waste was the installation of many ‘container islands’ (in Dutch these are called afvaleilandjes, literally waste islets, or milieupleintjes, little environment squares). These ‘islets’ consist of a series of subterranean or above ground containers for PMD, glass (white and coloured), paper and frequently textile as well. They were placed at strategic locations near supermarkets or shopping centres and people used them on a strictly voluntary basis (TC Tubantia, 9-8-2011). Waste coaches were appointed to instruct those people visiting the container islands who did not use the different neighbourhood containers appropriately. In contradiction to this pedagogic approach to stimulate the desired behaviour of residents, the municipality ironically maintained that it ‘must not be paternalistic by telling [citizens] what to do’.Footnote 5

A major new attempt towards residual waste reduction was diftar (differentiated tariffs), which Hengelo implemented in 2012, the first municipality in Twente to do so (TC Tubantia, 28-4-2011). Henceforth, households paid each time they put their grey mini-containers out on the pavement to be emptied. The orange PMD mini-containers were exempted from this levy, because they formed a recyclable flow which was not to be discouraged. People living in high-rise buildings (who did not have personal mini-containers) had to deposit their waste in new, locked, subterranean neighbourhood containers, which the inhabitants could open with a personal pass, paying for each time they did this.

The last major attempt to reduce residual waste began in the summer of 2018 when the municipality turned its mind to doing away with the grey mini-containers completely and to this end introduced the reversed collection policy. Hereafter, people in the low-rise buildings also had to dispose their residual waste themselves. Many new underground containers for this purpose were placed in the town. Citizens had to pay € 1.20 (€ 1.30 in 2022) every time they deposited waste in the chute of the containers (for every ‘click’ as people said, referring to the sound of the lid) and a maximum of 30 L could be deposited at a time.

The municipality countered part of the fierce public criticism of the combined policy of reversed collection and diftar by allowing residents the choice of keeping their old mini-container (hence called ‘choice container’, keuzecontainer), albeit against a much higher tariff and emptied only once every eight weeks. People who were too physically challenged to take their residual waste to the underground containers themselves (this could be checked by a medical specialist) were assigned a ‘care-container’ (zorgcontainer) for the old tariff. A true case of service co-production is the door-to-door collection of paper by social and sport clubs on days set by the municipality (TC Tubantia, 21-6-2018; IPR NORMAG 2020, p. 37).Footnote 6

The municipal waste separation policy was made complete by a solution to household waste which does not fit in the chute of the neighbourhood containers. Citizens can bring their bulky waste and other material which is not part of the regular household waste flow to the recycling centre (milieupark) of Twente Milieu. Their waste is separated into different streams. Some, such as electronic devices, small chemical waste, metals, (bulky) garden waste but also glass, paper and textiles, which could have been delivered free at the container islands, could also be handed in for free. Other wastes like tyres, wood, and bulky waste like furniture cost € 1.50 per 10 kg (each household can bring 50 kg for free per year). Twente Milieu also offers to pick up bulky waste at home, which costs € 22.50 over and above the regular tariff (IPR NORMAG 2020, p. 37).

Even the residual waste serves a purpose. It is burnt to generate energy, metals are being filtered out and the ash is used in road construction. According to Twence, the company which manages the landfill and has Twente municipalities as its only shareholders, only 5 per cent of the waste goes to landfill and methane gas can be siphoned off and used as fuel.Footnote 7 Ironically, the reduction in residual waste has created problems for Twence. To keep its ovens burning, waste has had to be imported from Great Britain and Germany (TC Tubantia, 14-12-2018), while Twence earns money by offering this service, transporting waste over a long distance is not sound policy environmentally speaking. Moreover, the municipality has faced a shrinking tax income from the reduced disposal of residual waste, and therefore has been considering increasing the tariff to generate sufficient income.Footnote 8 The consideration that the municipality may increase the tariff for residual waste to compensate the citizens’ successful reduction of residual waste is exemplary of what Willem Trommel (2013) has called a ‘greedy government’, intent on self-preservation rather than true ‘self-organization’ (Uitermarkt 2015). While naturally a municipality needs to close its budget, raising tariffs in response to desired citizen behaviour is likely to harm ‘public engagement’ (Kekez et al. 2019) and ‘active citizenship’ (Boutellier 2014).

Official numbers show that the varied policy has been successful: residual waste collection decreased from 239 kg per person per year in 2011 (before diftar was introduced) to 121 kg in 2017 and down to 87 kg/pp in 2019.Footnote 9 However, a private consultant hired by the municipality concluded that, despite the progress made, the behavioural changes have not been enough to meet the agreed target of 50 kg in 2030 (Necker van Naem 2017) and the same conclusion was drawn by the ‘strategy and innovation manager’ of Twente Milieu (TC Tubantia, 21-06-2018). Another consultant has stated that 75 percent weight of the residual waste contained recyclable resources (IPR NORMAG 2020, p. 18).

Nevertheless, the insufficiency in the reduction might not be the biggest problem in the battle against residual waste. Even more important is that, while its volume might be on the decrease, residual waste is also increasingly ending up in other places, instead of being separated and handed in as recyclables by the households. While most people have accepted reversed collection and diftar, conforming to the formal rules and playing the role assigned to them according to the concept of service co-production, there are also people who have found alternative ways of handling waste.

Alternative flows of residual waste

Waste can take various alternative flows outside the formal flow once it leaves the household. While some alternative flows of waste remain within the bounds of the formal system or are returned to the formal system at the recycle centre (milieupark) of the regional waste collection company, Twente Milieu, other flows disappear from the municipal system or literally disappear completely. Although some of these flows are frequently undesirable from an environmental perspective, others offer exemplary examples of sustainable behaviour. In some cases, the undesirable flows are produced unintentionally, when the logic of the policy has escaped citizens or plays out differently on the ground, but in other cases citizens deliberately try to outwit the formal system, practising ‘the art of not being governed’ (Scott 2009).

In the first instance, there are many ways in which objects which might be thrown away do not become waste at all, for example by repair. The repair café is a citizens’ initiative which has become a monthly event in Hengelo, which we attended several times during our fieldwork. People bring broken objects and volunteers do their best to repair them. While the work is free, a donation by the owner is expected. Of course, there are also many commercial repair shops, among whom bicycle repairers loom large in the Netherlands.

Another way to avoid items becoming waste is to find new owners, both commercially and non-commercially. The municipality has introduced the sharing container to encourage this strategy. Marktplaats (‘Market Place’) is a well-known, popular website used on a national scale, on which individuals offer objects for sale. The Ruilkring (‘Exchange Cycle’) is an initiative by which people trade goods and services in a closed system using its own currency. The popular local second-hand warehouse, Het Goed, resells things people no longer need. Many more small thrift- and give-away shops have sprung up, and many people we talked to have mentioned giving away old things directly to friends, neighbours, or family. While the above examples of ways that citizens, avoiding that objects no longer of use to them become waste, contribute to the state goal of reducing the volume of residual waste, they cannot be considered cases of service co-production, because the state is not involved in these acts.

Besides these two alternatives, there are flows of waste which bypass reversed collection and diftar, but nevertheless still use facilities within the formal waste system. The most striking example of such a facility is the ‘choice mini-container’ (keuzecontainer) mentioned earlier which the municipality introduced to assuage the fiercest protesters to reversed collecting. An unanticipated use of municipal facilities has been found by residents who bring their residual waste to the recycle centre in bags paying a tariff of €1.50 per 10 kg. We spoke to various people who find this easier, since they transport multiple bags by car thereby eliminating trips to the underground containers with small bags. One inhabitant was very outspoken about this:

‘Why I bring them here, you ask? Because it is much easier for me! I am not gonna walk a few hundred metres with such a bag three times!’

Others, by contrast, come to the recycle centre by bike bringing their waste in a bag; by carefully remaining just below the minimum weight of 10 kg, they manage to deposit their waste for free. These evasive tactics were only condoned if practised under the radar by small numbers. When the managers of the recycle centre found out what was going on, they decided to charge a minimum tariff of €1.50 per bag, regardless of the weight.

A more harmful tactic by which to exploit the formal waste management system is by mixing residual and bulky waste with other categories. Admittedly this mixing can be done out of ignorance, even dedicated separators did not always know exactly what should go in the PMD container. For instance, we spoke to quite a few people who were surprised to hear crisp-packets with an aluminium inner layer could not be put in because the machines cannot handle the non-aluminium coating. Furthermore, even waste coaches at the waste islands did not know that German PMD packages should be excluded, since these were not part of the contract with the packaging industry which sponsors the recycling process. This is a serious restriction since Hengelo is close to the international border and many inhabitants purchase their groceries in Germany. Other people consciously mix PMD waste with residual waste for the sake of convenience or simply to save money. Especially large public PMD (as well as paper and textile) containers situated in less conspicuous places are notorious as dumping sites for non-PMD waste.

The consequences of the polluted PMD are severe. Suez, the private company handling the PMD waste, accepts a maximal pollution rate of 15 percent but on average it was discovered that 35 percent of the PMD was polluted, and this percentage had gone up since the introduction of reversed collection (TC Tubantia, 3-10-2018). Consequently, by 2020, 88 per cent of the freights of PMD waste offered to this private company by municipalities had to be rejected. This rejection of PMD waste not only thwarted recycling targets, but also led to a financial loss of € 730,000 in 2020; instead of receiving money for the recyclables, the municipality had to pay for the incineration of the now useless PMD waste.Footnote 10

Another common and highly visible misappropriation of the formal system is the dumping of waste on container islands next to the containers. In one instance, there was no option but to close a container island because the jumble was uncontrollable and the costs incurred by the municipality for tidying up illegally dumped waste rose by 50 percent after the introduction of reversed collection (TC Tubantia, 5-3-2019, 8-12-2020). This practice is particularly common in lower-class neighbourhoods, especially after the weekends. It is not only a solution to avoid paying for residual waste disposal, but also pertains to neatly separated waste which could have been disposed of for free in the neighbourhood containers for paper or glass.

One reason we repeatedly heard is that when a container is full people do not make the effort to go to the next nearest one which is usually located only a few hundred metres away. The following conversation with an inhabitant who is concerned about the environment and therefore tries hard to limit his waste is illustrative for this:

Inhabitant: ‘Well, sometimes the container is full or stuck (…) Then they want you to take the waste with you again and bring it somewhere else. So, you already walked a 100 metres to and back, and then you need to bring the waste bag again and look for another place to dispose it. Then it obviously gets a bit weird, doesn’t it? But if you put it next to the container you risk a fine, if they find out or catch you.’

Jordi: ‘So what do you generally do in such situations?’

Inhabitant: ‘I just put it next to the container.’

Paper containers are often not really full but the opening is repeatedly blocked by cardboard because people have not made the necessary effort to fold boxes or tear them into smaller bundles. Others coming later refuse to right the situation and prefer to leave their old paper on the pavement next to the container. Glass containers are also frequently encircled by large glass bottles or vases which do not fit through the opening. Waste coaches on the container islands explained the situation in terms of the broken-window mechanism:

‘Waste attracts waste. Even when the containers are not full, people just seem to put their waste next to it, if there is waste already.’

While these examples are from people who have tried to participate in the separation of waste and then found the system based on service co-production to be less than satisfactory, others deliberately obstruct the formal system. Some citizens have discovered that at some neighbourhood containers, if the chute was not fully closed, a limitless number of bags could be deposited with only one click (TC Tubantia, 22-10-2020, 14-11-2020). People also leave a rubbish bag in the opening without paying the click; when the next person refuses to pay for his or her predecessor or cannot squeeze their waste into the same opening, bags of waste quickly pile up next to the container. One obvious motivation for this behaviour is to avoid payment, safe in the knowledge that the waste will ultimately be collected anyway.

In the above examples, the waste is concentrated on the container islands, but waste can also be found in other public spaces. Residual household waste is left in public bins or bins designated for dog pooh. Residents who are in favour of household separation often see no harm in resorting to such practices because residual waste is being deposited with residual waste, especially if less-well-to-do residents choose this option to avoid paying clicks at the neighbourhood containers. In the eyes of the municipality, however, this is illegal because no fees are paid.

Bulky waste is also frequently left behind on container islands or other places in public spaces. Obvious motivations for this laxity are that people lack either the time or a car to take bulky waste to the recycle centre of Twente Milieu and are unable or unwilling to pay extra to have the bulky waste to be picked up from their homes. A social worker, for example, told us about a woman living on a minimum income who would rather give things away because, if she were to throw them away, it would cost her money; if she cannot find a new owner, placing objects on the pavement seems to her a pardonable alternative solution. Others who were better placed to afford to pay Twente Milieu to pick up bulky waste nonetheless dumped it because as soon as they did it openly, neighbours would place their waste next to it. While they declared they were willing to pay for their own waste, they refused to pay for others. Waste coaches have also noticed that Muslim residents with a migrant background regularly leave unwanted possessions in the street with the positive thought that others might be happy to use them. Despite their good intentions, it results in littering of public space, as does well-intentioned feeding of birds, which moreover attracts rats.

Alongside the waste coaches on container islands, in some neighbourhoods the municipality has appointed janitors (wijkconciërges) for five days a week, both to keep the streets clean and to remonstrate with people but without immediately handing out fines. Having accompanied both the neighbourhood janitors and waste coaches at work on several occasions, we have no hesitation in arguing that both are fulfilling an important function. The janitors gain knowledge just by being there, listening to people and acting upon complaints, without having to stick to planned routes as other maintenance workers do. Both janitors and waste coaches can call in help from Twente Milieu, bypassing the many stages cluttering the free running of formal procedures.

What all the waste flows discussed so far–except bulky ‘waste’ reused by a new owner– have in common is that they eventually end up at the recycle station of Twente Milieu. The fact that the waste is ultimately collected by Twente Milieu persuades the culprits they have not committed any offence. In a reaction to such vindications, neighbourhood janitors sometimes wait before cleaning the street in the hope that the wrongly disposed waste will act as a visual or olfactory reminder to the perpetrators of their misconception. Separation at this stage takes too much time, so that, for example, neatly separated bags containing wastepaper or PMD placed next to the public containers are put onto the pile of unsorted waste at the recycle centre and end in the incinerator. Precious recyclables get lost this way.

While the flows mentioned so far undermine the separation goals of the municipal system (and mess up the statistics on separation at the source), they still remain within the municipal system. However, there are also flows of household waste which move completely out of it. Household waste can also end up in the same pile as company waste. Companies are not obliged to separate their waste and make use of commercial waste-collecting companies which serve them at a lower rate than Twente Milieu would charge. Some employees take their household waste to the company container at work or people with a (small) private company deposit their household waste in their own company container. People we spoke to do this to save money. For example, a father of two young children told us how he began looking for a solution for the disposal of nappies which had become a financial burden.

‘With all these diapers we sometimes have seven bags a week, so that’s very expensive. But I have found a solution for that! On my way to work is a truck stop with a container I can throw them in. For the rest we do separate, plastic and paper. But this way I actually never have residual waste’.

Using company containers for household waste is clearly not how these containers were intended to be used, but people have also found licit ways to circumvent the municipal system. They can bring waste to scrap iron dealers or rubbish crushers. There are companies who charge less for the disposal of bulky waste than Twente Milieu. There were also two companies in the neighbouring municipality of Enschede which used to handle only company waste but have now opened their doors for household waste too since Hengelo introduced reversed collection (TC Tubantia, 11-10-2017, 30-3-2019). Other people take waste with them on visits to friends or family in adjacent municipalities which have not adopted diftar.

To end this overview of citizens’ tactics, we would like to mention the illegal practice of burning waste, which takes place in the sparsely populated fringes of the municipality and the occasional dumping (fly tipping) along the road. In sum, evasive tactics are being practised on a massive scale: it was discovered that over 5000 households paid scarcely a penny for the disposal of residual waste in 2019. Of them, almost 3000 had paid nothing at all (TC Tubantia, 14-11-2020). Citizens’ behaviour has been far more diverse than policy makers anticipated in ways they find difficult to grasp.

A tug-of-war between the municipality and enraged citizens

The municipality has been looking for ways to make citizens toe the line and curb waste flows it deemed undesirable, and the upshot has been a tug-of-war between municipality and enraged citizens to the point it is no longer clear whether the behaviour of the latter has stemmed from sincere concerns about waste or wanton destructiveness. Two critical citizens who were invited to discuss the matter by the alderman responsible were prompted by distrust to record the meeting secretly. Residents have deliberately parked their cars on locations selected for the placement of neighbourhood containers to obstruct the work. One former councillor tweeted about Alderman Bas van Wakeren dubbing him ‘Alderman Bassie’ (Bassie is the name of a well-known clown in the Netherlands). One of the two criticasters who had secretly recorded a meeting threatened he would use the club on the alderman; the mayor reacted to the physical threat by reporting it to the police and the citizen in turn brought a charge of libel against the mayor. The other published a picture on his website showing separated coloured and white glass which had allegedly been lumped together in one pile at the recycling station of Twente Milieu; the picture suggested that separation by citizens was undone by the authorities. In reality, the picture only showed the pile of coloured glass and the pile of white glass next to it had been left out. A third notoriously critical citizen, who frequently called, visited and wrote to the municipality had a restraining order placed on all his communication except for in written form; answering all his calls was, financially and psychologically, too much of a burden on the council employees. This citizen had accused the municipality of deliberately presenting misleading data on waste management (TC Tubantia, 25-4-2017, 21-9-2018, 24-9-2018, 22-8-2019, 7-9-2019, 16-11-2020, 27-8-2021). One of the staunchest opponents of the municipal policy, who was nonetheless in favour of separation of waste in principle, confided to us that he dumps other plastics in PMD containers as an act of defiance and civil disobedience. The two men who had recorded their meeting with the alderman advised citizens to hide residual waste at the bottom of PMD mini-containers or inside bottles thrown into the glass container as a ‘smart’ way to avoid paying for residual waste.

Both the alderman responsible and council employees have reacted, perhaps understandably, to such obstruction with condescension. In both his interview with us and in public statements, the alderman dismissed various recalcitrants as ‘assholes’ (hufters) (see also TC Tubantia, 21-9-2018) or as ‘yellow vest’ protesters, like those making life difficult for the French government at the time. This patronizing, albeit well-intended, view that the mind-set of citizens needs to be changed in order to cut off the undesirable flows of waste was also apparent in our interviews with council employees and came to the fore at a regional Waste Symposium (18 October 2018) through which it ran in all the presentations like a scarlet thread. As one civil servant confided:

‘We must get from a linear to a circular economy […] And what you see is that this change, which actually is quite clear, must get in the heads of people. And what matters to us is to get this awareness into the heads’. He then continued:

There just are antisocial people in this world. That is what it is. The previous alderman did not allow me to call it this way, but we simply have a certain percentage of antisocial people […] and the big question is: how to deal with this? Maybe one must simply accept that in certain small neighbourhoods more people reside who always put waste next to the container. One rewards good behaviour. And wishes to ideally punish bad behaviour.’

Obviously such statements are not made in public, but citizens can feel such municipal views just the same. Some of the opponents were antagonistic towards the disdainful attitude of policy makers. A person told us:

‘I cannot stand the suggestion that critics are rendered anti-social people who supposedly don’t care about the environment’.

The municipality has sought to promote more behavioural change in its citizens through a mixed strategy of improved service, building public awareness and repression, or, in the words of one council employee ‘carrot and the stick’. Improved service was already on offer in the form of the choice mini-containers. In addition, the municipality has considered increasing the amount of waste which can be handed in at the recycling station for free and picking up bulky waste from the street without charge once a month. The latter service would not only be a way to prevent littering, but would also help persons like an older woman to whom we talked who lacked both the physical strength and social capital to dispose of bulky waste herself. Another initiative is the Afvalbalie (literal translation: Waste Counter); a mobile container which is placed in neighbourhoods on set dates. Here, people can hand in their smaller waste which could previously only be handed in at the milieupark (TC Tubantia, 09-10-2020). Post-collection separation of waste would have been a major change of service, but Twence (TC Tubantia, 18-12-2021), as well as an external consultant (IPR NORMAG 2020, p. 21), concluded that given the very expensive machinery and the relatively limited amount of waste, the costs of waste collection would have to increase considerably for citizens.

Policy makers in the municipality were thinking along pedagogic lines of improving citizens’ separation behaviour by building awareness. Waste coaches and neighbourhood janitors informed citizens directly. A leaflet was regularly distributed door-to-door. In an attempt to modify behaviour from an early age, one concrete plan devised by Twente Milieu was to develop a course on waste separation for primary schools. In an interview with us, the alderman told he had considered making small gardens around waste islands to discourage people to dump their waste. When the municipality suffered financial losses because PMD collected waste was too polluted to be sold, it increased the standard tariff for waste collection from 156 to 179 Euro/year/household, publicly putting the blame for the increase on the misbehaving residents (TC Tubantia, 11-11-2020).

Repression took the form of checking of the orange PMD mini-containers by hand; containers with too much pollution were not emptied and had a warning sticker stuck on them. In April 2020, repression was stepped up by the installation of two mobile cameras on container islands and fines of €104 for identified offenders. In just one year, 430 penalties were handed out. However, determined lawbreakers carefully removed address labels from any envelopes thrown away to avoid identification (TC Tubantia, 20-10-2020, 24-3-2021).

Education and repression could have improved separation practices of many citizens. However, these policies have missed the point that certain citizens who simply hold different opinions were sceptical of the experts and were irritated precisely by the paternalistic and distrustful attitudes displayed by municipal employees, or were angry about what they saw as misleading methods. Negativity towards the municipality’s policies or attitude often echoes deeper frictions between citizens and local government. Such irritations have also been found among people who in principle were in favour of diftar and reversed collection; for example, one man told us he found the compulsory medical examination to obtain a care-container condescending.

‘These people also did not choose to fall ill, or become incontinent. These are not free choices, are they? And then I think, don’t burden these people with that and do not make a fuss about it. And if someone [ill] says they have much waste, just trust it, without all the medical mass of paperwork […] Trust has just gone. Of citizens in the government and of the government in citizens.’

Even dedicated separators were sceptical about their behaviour making a difference, after having read that much of the separated waste will be burnt anyway. The last point also serves to illustrate that not all positive citizens accept information from local government at face value and consult other, more critical sources. Whereas in the cat-and-mouse game between local government and its citizens no side has got the upper hand, the already brittle mutual trust between the government and groups of citizens has been further damaged.

At the root of the incongruity of municipal expectations and citizens’ behaviour lies the fact that the local government sees the people as a ‘resource’ (Brix et al. 2020, p. 169) rather than partners in the service co-production. Naturally, some citizens have rejected such ‘compulsory engagement’ (Park 2020, p. 457) in the service co-production. Without mutual trust in each others’ good intentions real service co-production by the state and citizens will be impossible.

Sustainability which connects with the people

It is important to remind that the majority of citizens comply with the municipal regulations, and not all municipal initiatives have evoked opposition. Plus, other local government schemes have received a warmer welcome. One initiative developed by Twente Milieu together with an NGO is the ‘sharing mini-container’ (deelcontainer). Citizens can ask Twente Milieu for such a container for their neighbourhood in which they leave behind intact goods they no longer use in the hope that others pick them up for free. Possible leftovers will be picked up by the second-hand warehouse, Het Goed. The share container stands out among other policies, because it leaves the initiative in the neighbours’ court and is a fine example of service co-production.

The municipality launched another successful experiment in service co-production, the food bike (voedselfiets), in 2016. It began in two neighbourhoods, one of which is Hengelose Es, an area with high-rise buildings, on the whole a lower-class population and severe problems with littering. Although the project had not been designed to cut off undesired flows of waste, it did reduce residual waste. People in the apartment blocks did not have space for a green mini-container for organic waste so it was thrown away with residual waste. In the food bike experiment, voluntary participants could borrow a designated bucket to collect waste from vegetables and fruit and empty it in a carry tricycle, the voedselfiets, which transported it to the municipal gardens to make compost. The bikes used six fixed routes with specific stops at set times on three days a week.

The food bikes were a success. A survey conducted among participants in the food bike project found that 69 per cent of them separated food waste more regularly and 53 per cent declared they had also separated other waste more often since they had participated in the food bike project (Mulder et al. 2020, p. 36). The food bikes appealed to the self-interest of the residents who discovered that, with the removal of the organic waste, they had less residual waste for which they had to pay at the chutes of the public containers. Moreover, the regular emptying of the buckets reduced the stench produced by rotting waste at home. The food bike project also made an appeal to idealism, although most participants preferred to talk about their general environmental worries rather than the specific goal to make compost out of kitchen waste.

Apart from addressing citizens’ aspirations to save money and do good for the environment, the project was also successful because it connected more broadly with what people found important and how they wanted to live their lives. People joined because they felt a sense of belonging to their neighbourhood, and consequently found that going to the food bike was also socially gratifying. They enjoyed the small talk with neighbours around the food bikes, which occasionally developed into longer conversations, especially where stops had been selected near public benches. The tricycles were ridden by people employed at subsidized work places who find it difficult to find work in an open job market and helping the cyclists to have a paid job gave the residents a warm glow. Some residents brought the cyclists coffee and snacks; conversely, the cyclists have stimulated the residents by giving friendly advice on proper recycling and paying them compliments (Bok and Colombijn 2023). A survey confirmed our qualitative research on the social aspect: 68 per cent of the respondents have experienced more contact with their neighbours (Mulder et al. 2020, p. 36).

As do the neighbourhood janitors mentioned earlier, the cyclists have acted as ‘eyes on the street’ (Jacobs 1961); when they are there it is practically impossible for residents to litter. The cyclists turned a blind eye to people bringing more than what fits into one bucket or using other than the designated bucket as well as looking the other way when inhabitants from other neighbourhoods made use of the facility. Nevertheless, not all improper use of the food bikes has been condoned and both residents and cyclists have been annoyed by people who have brought their bucket to the street at an early hour and left it for others to empty it (Bok & Colombijn 2023). Sadly the municipality ended the food bike project in 2023.

While the food bike has shown us successful ways of connecting to what people find important in their daily lives, another significant finding during our fieldwork has been that within their broader lives people balance sustainable behaviour with other priorities, especially comfort and freedom. A participant in the food bike experiment explained at the end of our conversation about her food bike participation and sustainable behaviour:

‘I know that what we are contributing is right, that it feels right. ... But if it gets too complicated, requires too many capers, or makes too deep inroads upon my purse, then it is going to be difficult.’

She pays great attention to waste separation, but also frequently lights her wood-burning stove, admitting that it is not good for the environment, but defending it by saying she loves the warmth and the atmosphere.

Another case of paradoxical behaviour which we have frequently observed at the recycle centre is people discarding perfectly reusable furniture as waste. After dumping the ‘waste’ in the containers, the most common reaction we noted was a sigh of relief, and people saying something like ‘well that’s over and done with’. One man, who discarded multiple pieces of furniture which appeared to be good enough to get a new owner told us:

‘I could put them on Marktplaats [a Dutch internet website to sell and buy second hand products] and ask a euro for it, but then there will be someone at the door again. Or I could let them be picked up by a thrift store, but then you first need to make an appointment. No, I will just do it like this. It’s easier, and I’m rid of it straight away.’

When interviewed by us, most of the time it appeared people would be happy for these products to have a second life, but did not want to make the effort to make this happen. Some visitors asked staff if there was a point nearby where they could hand in such suitable products only to hear that the largest second-hand warehouse, Het Goed, is located a few kilometres away; most of the visitors did not want to make the effort to separate sound from damaged objects and make the extra trip to Het Goed. While these examples might be disappointing from an environmental perspective, signals of potentially sustainable behaviour are shining through.

Conclusion

The municipality of Hengelo has taken major steps in separating household waste, recycling resources, and reducing the volume of residual waste. It has initiated a series of innovative policies to achieve these goals, among which differentiated tariffs (diftar) and reversed collection have been the most important and the responsible alderman and civil servants deserve praise for their efforts to promote a circular economy. Nevertheless, Hengelo has not yet reached its goal of 50 kg of residual waste per person per year; moreover, most of the PMD waste collected is too polluted to be recycled and has to be burnt. Furthermore, the littering of the city has become a major problem in the wake of the evasive tactics adopted by the citizens.

The majority of the residents we interviewed were convinced that the environment is important, and many wanted to contribute, but in ways which fitted their life worlds and rhythms. We encountered many situations in which practical considerations, in particular convenience, have undermined good intentions. The municipality could make considerable practical gains by improving its services at two points in the flow: keeping the containers on container islands constantly open and offering the opportunity to hand in functioning objects at the recycle centre for a second life. Improving municipal services could also eliminate some of the public negativity around the waste management.

We have studied the separation of waste flows at the source as a case of service co-production and our analysis answers the call of Sunggeung Park (2020) to study the power imbalance between service providers and service consumers. Our study is an exercise in the ‘anthropology of policy’ in which policies are seen as a ‘generative realm of cultural production, producing and shaped by values, norms, identities, and practices’ (Tate 2020, p. 85). The majority of benevolent citizens simply comply, but a minority resist the municipal waste policy through an astounding variety of ways of disposing of their waste and hence have a disproportionate effect on the formulation of new policies. The tactics employed by citizens to dispose their waste without having to pay for residual waste are exemplary cases of the art of not being governed or—to borrow another term of James Scott (1985)—‘weapons of the weak’: making fun of the municipality (calling the alderman a clown), and perpetrating countless, small, hidden, subversive acts. In fact, the citizens’ resistance is reinforcing the perception of aldermen and municipal employees that they are endowed with superior knowledge, and this patronizing feeling of superiority vis-à-vis the citizens affects their policy making.

Waste separation is organized as a service co-production riddled with ‘strategic ambiguity, which allows the appearance of institutional coherence’, while cloaking ‘contradictory initiatives’ (Tate 2020, p. 85). Citizens are supposed to play their part, but there cannot be real service co-production when the local government treats citizens as a source of free labour in the separation of waste flows. Citizens have become targets for municipal pedagogical efforts and repression. From the municipal perspective, non-compliant citizens are rather too quickly assumed to be ‘too outspoken and too passive. The lazy and noisy consumer’ (Boutellier 2014, p. 206).

We want to make a plea for a more modest local government which tries to discard its condescending attitude and embraces the good intentions of most citizens. We define ‘modest governance’ as an attitude of politicians and professional civil servants who recognize that in spite of their technical expertise, they do not necessarily know better than citizens and consequently take the citizens’ interpretations and concerns seriously.

Although the sharing mini-container and food bike projects cover only a small part of the total municipal waste flow, they can teach us a lot, because of their significant differences with diftar and reversed collecting. The food bike project especially enthuses people because, unlike diftar and reversed collecting, it appeals on positive emotions and addresses people’s self-interest in a positive way. In terms of idealistic motivations, many participants appreciate the way the food bike project helps people at some distance from the regular labour market and the way the organic waste is used locally in the gardens of the social work place. This makes their idealism tangible and extends beyond just doing good for the environment. Another major factor contributing to the food bike success is the way it targets a sense of belonging. Many people join because they welcome the interaction with their neighbours and the cyclists. Lastly, the food bike project has shown us that applying the rules flexibly and allowing bottom-up adjustments to local government policies has contributed to its success: the cyclists also assist residents without official buckets or with additional bags. The responsiveness of the people driving the food bikes towards their clients is an example of ‘modest governance’. These individuals, but also the neighbourhood janitors and waste coaches, are closer to the ordinary people and are therefore well equipped to truly implement the ideal of service co-production and see citizens as co-producers (Brix et al. 2020) in waste management.

The municipality of Hengelo is doing well in waste management, but it could do better by pursuing more modest governance in which it allows more recognition for the views of citizens. Modest governance does not punish citizens who deviate from the protocols, but tries to learn from them and accommodate their wishes. A modest local government takes citizens’ participation seriously, accepts their views even when they go against the convictions of the state experts, and attempts to engage with them in an honest and transparent manner.