This thesis deals with perceptions of refuse as an asset or as a liability and the questions of waste management practices. The aim has been to gain new insights into Stockholm’s waste management in the period 1900–1975 by studying change and continuity in municipal practices and the notions that governed the municipal actors’ actions. The central questions are what factors determined the city’s waste management, and how an urban and local (environmental) problem was formulated and addressed by local authorities and political bodies. In answering, I have applied a theory of inertia in large technical–administrative systems and an analytical framework based on the concept of waste management regimes. During the period a resource recovery regime was replaced by an incineration regime. At the turn of the last century, the quantity and type of refuse produced by Stockholm’s rising population was compounded by increasing consumption. In order to modernize the capital’s waste disposal the city invested in resource recovery by introducing source separation. The fall in demand for fertilizer and a changing composition of the waste in the 1920s made it more difficult to get rid of refuse and led to an end of waste separation. Incineration came to be seen as the modern option and in 1938 Sweden’s first modern incineration plant for municipal waste was built outside Stockholm. The amount of waste produced by Stockholm nearly tripled between 1922, when it was at its lowest levels, and the mid-1960s. The late 1960s saw an even more dramatic increase. In the 1960s waste was discussed as an important environmental issue and in the 1970s recycling was implemented in small scale. At the national level recycling was adopted as a waste management aim in 1975.

This thesis examines the formative years of the Swedish tenants´ associations in Gothenburg and Stockholm and the strategies used by these organizations to alter the housing market, both on a local and on a national level. It is both a transfer analysis, examining how strategies from the labor market came to be applied to the rental market and a comparative study, comparing tenants´ associations in two Swedish cities. Hyresgästernas Centralförsamling (HCF) in Gothenburg had a more conflict-oriented approach toward both individual and collectively organized landlords. The organizational structure of HCF was similar to that of a trade union federation. This differed from Stockholms Hyresgästförening (SHG). Resembling more a political association than a militant union, SHG adopted strategies more focused on gaining legislative protection for tenants and increasing the supply of available housing. This was partly achieved through the co-operative housing society Hyresgästernas Sparkasse- och Byggnadsförening (HSB). This thesis argues that the common denominator for all these strategies was to reduce the internal competition between tenants and thus strengthening them as a collective force on the rental market. The main conclusion of the thesis is that the tenants´ associations cannot be easily categorized by standard organizational models. Shaped by local, organizational and ideological factors the tenants´ associations were hybrid organizations resembling both trade unions, cooperative societies