The material politics of living in close proximity to our wastewaters: A case of decentralisation in the Netherlands

Abstract

This paper investigates how decentralised wastewater treatment initiatives experiment with ways to live in close proximity to wastewater and their potentiality for a future with less polluting wastewater. In the Netherlands, there is a contested political debate about whether centralised or decentralised technologies are better. Rather than engaging in this deliberative political debate, we articulate a less visible and more material politics by tracing different ways of ordering wastewater treatment in practice. Drawing on fieldwork with inhabitants, scientists, and engineers who have brought wastewater treatment ‘close to home’, we examine the turn to decentralisation as a material object of enquiry which, in turn, shapes our engagement with pollutants, technologies, and a range of non-human actors. We ask: What kinds of living together in close proximity to our waste do such decentralised experiments allow for?