Recycling urban waste on farmland: an actor-network interpretation

The problem of disposing of urban waste has been thrown into prominence by the European Union Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (91/271/EC) banning member states from dumping sewage sludge at sea from the end of 1998. The paper investigates one of the alternative disposal methods available to UK water companies, namely the recycling of sewage sludge on farmland. An 'actor-network' interpretation is developed, which focuses on the human actors and non-human intermediaries in the recycling of sewage sludge in agriculture. 'Regulation' and 'pricing' are shown to be competing 'modes of ordering' within the actor network, with scientific knowledge in its material forms as one of the principal actants. The actor network is used to consider the limits to the spreading of sewage sludge on farmland as a form of 'sustainable' resource management. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.