Urbanization is putting more pressure on waste management infrastructures in cities, which could lead to “inadequate and overburdened infrastructure” according to the United Nations (United Nations Statistics Division, 2019). Because people play an important role in the performance of waste management systems, the systems should be inclusive to all people (Vasconcelos et al., 2021). As currently no method suffices in studying both inclusivity and circularity in waste management processes this study proposes the waste journey method.

The waste journey method combines the customer journey theory and the theory of planned behavior and can be graphically presented as in Figure 1. In the waste journey method, the waste is followed from a waste perspective from actor to actor. In this journey the waste interacts with people, called touch points, who take certain actions that influence the circular performance of the waste management process. By mapping the waste management process and analyzing the arguments actors have for their actions, with the theory of planned behavior, the barriers, and opportunities for realizing inclusivity and circularity in a waste management process can be identified.

The barriers and gaps that are identified with the waste journey method can contribute to the improvement of the waste management process. Besides, this method is one of the first to recognize the preparation phase as an important phase for the circular performance of the waste management process. A downside of the waste journey method is that it is a time-consuming method to use, and it requires the transparency and willingness of all actors in the waste management process. This was also experienced in the case study where one of the actors was not willing to cooperate and commercial actors were not transparent about their waste trading contracts. Furthermore, the interview protocol of this research could have been better specified for each actor. Future studies should focus on implementing this method on other waste streams and developing the definition of inclusivity and specifying it for each actor in the waste management process