ABSTRACT
This chapter grounds the current discourse over governance and sustainability by means of a case study that operationalised a partnership approach to governance through deliberative engagement. It applies observations from a specific research context into household waste management and the controversial siting and development of Energy from Waste (EfW) facilities, to the wider sustainability debate. Within the field of sustainable development, climate change has emerged as the dominant discourse (Lovell et al. 2009), yet the challenge of waste – and, in this instance, household waste – is highly relevant. The rise in waste 1 has been, in part, a consequence of increasing consumerism and a throw-away society. The issue of waste brings the thinking on sustainability into sharp focus – that is, the resources of the world are finite, as is space for the disposal of waste.
