Developing a Participatory Approach to Support Decision-Making in Waste Management

Transition towards a circular economy and reaching the tightening recycling targets in the European Union require multilateral and joint efforts of multiple stakeholders. We arranged workshops with European experts in waste management to gather insights from typical decision processes, stakeholder groups involved, and challenges faced when improving the collection of recyclable waste fractions. Furthermore, we experimented with a method to facilitate the stakeholder interaction during one of the workshops. Based on the experiences gained, we propose the use of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) to support the management of interactive decision-making processes in waste management value chains. We analysed the findings from our practice-oriented, empiric decision-making exercise in light of selected literature from the fields of stakeholder theory and stakeholder engagement. Our claim is that the formal procedure of MCDM can help to provide a structure for the assessment of complex decision problems in situations where interdependencies between the actors and their conflicting interests affect the outcome. Furthermore, the proposed MCDM approach provides concrete results in the form of priorities between alternative actions. Although we have experimented with the approach in the context of waste management, the approach should also be applicable for creating shared understanding and legitimate decisions in multi-stakeholder networks in other contexts.