Three basic drivers of change are turning waste and waste management into a dynamic, fast changing, international economic sector. This transformation presents new choices and opportunities and provides lessons and pointers for industrial, social and environmental policy in the new post-industrial landscape. Multinationals are taking an increasing interest in waste. Privatization has opened up new' markets in collection. The new standards of treatment and the industrialization of waste management require resources beyond the means of small and medium-sized firms.
Transitions can take place in different forms and follow different courses.
The second function of public policy in this context is not just to facilitate the transition but to shape it in a way that meets wider policy goals. But, partly because it has been adopted so widely, the Green discourse masks differences over the direction of change. Two main courses have been followed. The first applies modern technology to the process of destruction, the second to that of conservation. There is a major conflict between these two approaches that has determined the politics of waste in the advanced industrial countries in the 1990s.