5. The Future of Urban Waste

The digital transformation of urban waste management has introduced data-driven systems that promise efficiency and behavioural fairness—but often deepen municipal dependency and shift environmental responsibility onto individuals. Yet behind this promise lies a growing reliance on proprietary digital infrastructures that reshape public services around opaque code, long-term vendor lock-ins, and selective visualisations of responsibility. This chapter critically examines the shift from closed waste data systems—characterised by private control and restricted access—to alternative models that foreground participation, municipal sovereignty, and infrastructural care.Using Poland’s Digital Urban Waste Tracking System (DUWTS) as a case study, the chapter analyses how digital infrastructures redistribute control, individualise environmental accountability, and prefigure speculative governance models such as personalised pricing. While DUWTS claims to optimise waste management, it also deepens municipal dependence on private providers and displaces systemic responsibility onto residents. Ethnographic research reveals the invisible labour behind “smart” systems and the frictions experienced by both workers and users. Drawing on infrastructure studies, critical data studies, and discard studies, the chapter theorises how waste becomes data—and how that data becomes politically potent.Rather than advocating openness as a technical fix, the chapter calls for rethinking data governance through the lens of justice, co-creation, and relational accountability. It proposes that open waste data infrastructures must be situated, negotiated, and democratically governed—capable of supporting not only traceability, but also collective agency. The conclusion outlines policy pathways for designing digital waste systems that redistribute—not concentrate—power and responsibility in the name of environmental justice.