Green-digital transition in municipal waste management: Ethnographic perspective on ‘smart’ waste monitoring and management system

IF 4.9 2区环境科学与生态学 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Environmental Science & Policy Pub Date : 2025-03-19 DOI:10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104037

Celina Strzelecka

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

This paper critically examines the Waste Monitoring and Management System (WMMS) implemented in several Polish cities as part of the green-digital transition. Positioned as a tool to advance green and digital transformation in waste management, WMMS promises to reduce environmental impact, improve recycling levels, and optimize waste collection. However, through ethnographic research, including 25 in-depth interviews and participant observations, the study reveals key discrepancies between these promises and the system's real-world outcomes. Rather than delivering environmental benefits, WMMS reinforces private sector control over municipal infrastructures, increases energy consumption due to extended data storage, and exacerbates issues of surveillance and data misrepresentation. These findings suggest that, despite the green-digital narrative, technologies like WMMS risk diverting attention from core environmental challenges by reducing complex ecological problems to technical solutions. The research underscores the need for more integrated approaches that balance technological innovation with local realities to achieve meaningful progress in green policy.

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来源期刊

Environmental Science & Policy 环境科学-环境科学

CiteScore

10.90

自引率

8.30%

发文量

332

审稿时长

68 days

期刊介绍： Environmental Science & Policy promotes communication among government, business and industry, academia, and non-governmental organisations who are instrumental in the solution of environmental problems. It also seeks to advance interdisciplinary research of policy relevance on environmental issues such as climate change, biodiversity, environmental pollution and wastes, renewable and non-renewable natural resources, sustainability, and the interactions among these issues. The journal emphasises the linkages between these environmental issues and social and economic issues such as production, transport, consumption, growth, demographic changes, well-being, and health. However, the subject coverage will not be restricted to these issues and the introduction of new dimensions will be encouraged.