Regulating Responsibility: Environmental Sustainability, Law, and the Platformisation of Waste Management

Title of the Paper

Regulating Responsibility: Environmental Sustainability, Law, and the Platformisation of Waste Management

Bibliographic Information

• Authors: Rob Comber, Chiara Rossitto
• Affiliations: Media Technology and Interaction Design Division, KTH Royal Institute of Technology; Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University
• Publication Year: 2023
• Conference: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '23)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581493

Thematic Domain

• Interaction between the digital platform economy and environmental sustainability, as well as legal and regulatory aspects of waste management.

Keywords

• Waste management, platform economy, environmental regulation, law, environmental sustainability, digital intervention, responsibility, algorithmic governance, sustainable design

Research Background and Issues

• Problem Statement: With the rise of digital platforms, the responsibility for waste management is shifting to individuals through algorithmic and digital interventions, potentially conflicting with traditional legal and regulatory frameworks.
• Significance: Urban waste management is a crucial component of environmental sustainability, and digital interventions may impact the governance and allocation of responsibilities in waste processing, with profound implications for environmental health and social equity.
• Research Motivation:
  • Investigate the intersection of technology and law in waste management.
  • Extend the theoretical framework of environmental care to new digital ecological contexts.
  • Address regulatory challenges posed by digital platforms in waste management.

Solutions

• Approach:
  • Conduct an in-depth analysis of the legal dispute between the City of Stockholm and the waste management digital platform Tiptapp.
  • Utilize a theoretical framework of digital environmental governance to study the allocation of responsibilities in waste management.
• Innovations:
  • Integrate legal and regulatory considerations into sustainable HCI research, proposing new methods for understanding environmental care.
  • Reveal the complex interactions between technology, regulation, and environmental care through legal analysis.
• Key Techniques and Implementation Steps:
  • Analyze legal documents related to the case between Stockholm and Tiptapp, track case developments, and extract key themes.
  • Investigate how digital platforms reshape waste management processes through algorithmic governance and datafication.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:
  • Comprehensive demonstration of how the legal framework for waste management is challenged by digital platforms, including reinterpretations of "waste" management responsibility and definitions of "care."
  • Identification of how digital processes (e.g., GPS tracking, image documentation) alter the allocation of waste management responsibilities.
  • Discussion of potential collaboration models between digital platforms and public sectors in the use and governance of waste data.
• Advantages:
  • Reinterpretation of waste management processes under platformisation, providing a theoretical foundation for designing more effective environmental governance mechanisms.
  • Highlighting how legal interpretations influence the feasibility and societal legitimacy of digital solutions.
• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  • Tiptapp's operations were ultimately permitted by the court, demonstrating that legal regulations can adapt to digital innovations while posing new design challenges for environmental governance.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Limitations:
    • Analysis focused solely on a single legal case, lacking coverage of broader scenarios.
    • Legal document analysis did not directly capture the experiences and perspectives of involved parties.
  • Future Directions:
    • Explore how design processes can more comprehensively integrate regulations and technology.
    • Develop new design methodologies, such as legally sensitive design cards and regulatory prototypes, to support effective interactions between digital technologies and ecosystems.