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Maine’s materials management system is stuck in a disposal mode of waste governance. Despite significant investments in programs and policies designed to reduce the amount of waste the state buries each year, recent shocks and uncertainties have resulted in increased waste generation and disposal. This paper analyzes specific ways through which materials management in Maine has become locked in to a disposal mode of waste governance. We build a framework to help understand various forms of lock-in and how they might be unlocked. This framework is applied to the extended producer responsibility packaging law that is presently under the rule-making process in Maine, the first state to adopt such a policy in the United States. 

Abstract Drawing on research with food waste recycling facilities in New England, this paper explores a fundamental tension between the eco-modernist logics of the circular economy and the reality of contemporary waste streams. Composting and digestion are promoted as key solutions to food waste, due to their ability to return nutrients to agricultural soils. However, our work suggests that food waste processors increasingly find themselves responsible for policing boundaries between distinct “material” and “biological” systems as imagined by the architects of the circular economy—boundaries penetrable by toxicants. This responsibility creates significant problems for processors due to the regulatory, educational, and structural barriers documented in this research. This paper contributes to scholarship which suggests the need to rethink the modernist logics of the circular economy and to recognize the realities of entangled material and biological systems. More specifically, we argue that if circularity is the goal, policy needs to recognize the barriers food waste processors face and concentrate circularity efforts further upstream to ensure fair, just, and safe circular food systems. 

Recent disruptions in waste management, including the COVID-19 pandemic and China’s decision to limit waste imports from the United States, have shocked materials management systems across the United States. In Maine, these disruptions have been exacerbated by significant disturbances in the state’s waste management infrastructure. These shocks, emerging on multiple scales, combine to strongly impact Maine’s communities. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders involved in waste hauling, processing, outreach and education, as well as state and municipal government. Our paper explores how participants are leveraging these experiences to envision a more resilient materials management system for the state. However, as this case study illustrates, the complexity of materials management systems means that there is no single solution for ongoing, emergent, and unforeseen disruptions. Our research identifies tensions related to how to define system boundaries, the respective roles of the government and markets, issues of scale, and the dual need for both centralized and distributed solutions. Our exploration of materials management disruptions in Maine demonstrates the complexity of building and managing systems that attempt to balance the social, economic and ecological dimensions of materials management systems.