ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an examination of municipal waste management that is set within the wider socio-political context of environmental governance in Ireland. The waste governance analysis is structured to attend to policy interventions, interactions between governance actors and governing outcomes. From an institutional perspective a pivotal moment in Irish waste management was the establishment of the 1996 Waste Management Act that incorporated demands for management plans, licensing procedures and increased monitoring of implementation and compliance. There is a growing body of research that claims certain actions of civil society in the waste field, such as community based recycling organizations (CBROs), produce benevolent effects' for society and for the environment. There are many interesting dimensions to the geographies of waste governance in Ireland, but the sanctioning of municipal solid waste (MSW) incinerators following the 1996 Waste Management Act has caused particular controversy.
