At the turn of the 19th century, Prague was among the cities experiencing rapid demographic growth. In 1888, official statistics recorded 284,586 inhabitants; by the turn of the century, the figure had risen to over 368,000, and by 1920 to almost half a million. In 1930, Prague’s population was estimated at 830,982. This growth reflected both rising population density and the city’s geographical expansion, as it gradually absorbed the neighbouring areas on both banks of the River Vltava. A sharp increase occurred in 1922, when so-called Greater Prague was formed by merging all Prague municipalities and the originally independent suburbs into a single administrative unit (see graph 1).

As the city expanded, the volume of waste – household waste, ash and street sweepings – rose steadily. An understanding of the amount of waste generated in Prague can be gained from a public tender for the years 1886–1888 for the collection of waste from the largest landfill at the time in Libeň, on the right bank of the Vltava. According to existing historical literature, as much as four-fifths of Prague’s solid waste was sent there. Stružková, “Odpady v 19. století v Praze jako příklad interakcí města a jeho okolí,” 46. Stružková, “Odpady v 19. století v Praze,” 115. The tender estimated the annual waste volume at 13,809 m3 of household waste (including ash) and 382 cartloads of horse manure. “Vyhláška,” Pražské hospodářské noviny, Vol. 8, No. 17, 15 September 1885, 136. This figure corresponds to the actual quantities of waste collected from this landfill during those years. Josef Stára, the owner of the estate in Radonice, leased 1/6 of the Libeň landfill (approx. 15 km from Radonice) between 1886 and 1888, which allegedly amounted to “about 2,300 m3”. In those years, he extracted 2,088 m3, 2,424 m3 and 1,962 m3. This allows the total volume of waste at the Libeň landfill to be calculated as 12,258 m3, 14,544 m3, and 11,772 m3. AHMP, MHMP I., Main Registry – Section B, records 1881–1890, ref. B 29/11, Tender announced by the City Council for the years 1886–1888 and Statement by the Municipal Economic Office in Prague dated 29 May 1889 regarding waste collection by Josef Stára. The administrative report of the City of Prague states that in 1898, 25,627 cartloads of rubbish and ash were collected, which, when converted at a rate of 1 cart = 1.6 m3, amounted to 41,003 m3. Administrační zpráva královského hlavního města Prahy a spojených s městskou statistickou kommissí obcí Karlína, Smíchova, Král. Vinohradů a Žižkova za rok 1898 (Praha: Statistická kommise král. hlav. města Prahy a spojených obcí, 1900), 257. Ludvík Čížek, a member of the City Building Council and professor of Czech Technical University in Prague, who conducted a survey on waste management in Czech towns, reported that Prague was already generating 70,000 m3 of solid waste annually in 1909. Ludvík Čížek, “Péče o čištění českých měst v království českém na počátku XX. století,” in Čtvrtý sjezd českých měst z království českého v královském hlavním městě Praze ve dnech 15.-17. října 1911 (Praha: publisher not identified, 1911), 192. AHMP, MHMP I., Department XVI – for markets, slaughterhouses, and city supplies, ref. no. d 12/15, box 89, Cleaning as part of the municipal technical agenda (handwritten lecture by Ludvík Čížek for the City Building Authority, estimated 1906). Following the establishment of Greater Prague in 1922, the figures rose sharply – for example, in 1925 it was 189,156, Statistická zpráva hlavního města Prahy za rok 1925, Vol. 45 (Praha: Statistický úřad hlavního města Prahy, 1930), 107. and in 1930 it was already 319,467 m3 of solid waste from households, ash and street sweepings. Statistická zpráva hlavního města Prahy za léta 1930–1933, Vol. 50–53 (Praha: Statistický úřad hlavního města Prahy, 1937), 248. This represented 23 times more than the estimate from 1888 (see graph 2). The press in the 1920s repeatedly reported that Prague generated an average of almost 50 railway wagons (1 wagon = 10,000 kg) of waste per day. Jar. Veselý, “Technické problémy velkoměsta,” Národní listy, Vol. 67, No. 142, 24 May 1927, 1–2.

Throughout the period under review, the cleaning of the city and the collection and disposal of Prague’s solid waste were the responsibility of the municipal administration. Costs as a percentage of the city’s total expenditures were rising. In 1888, they amounted to just under 200,000 gulden (approx. 1.57% of city expenditures), and by the mid-1920s they had reached almost 22 million Czechoslovak crowns (3.64% of city expenditures). AHMP, MHMP I., Minutes of the City Administrative Bodies, inv. no. 533, City Council Meetings, July–August 1926 (Minutes of the 31st meeting held on 27 August 1926). The task was overseen by the city administration, which operated through a network of so-called municipal yards. Pavel Bělina et al., Dějiny Prahy II. Od sloučení pražských měst v roce 1784 do současnosti (Praha, Litomyšl: Paseka, 1998), 190. Until 1919, the city’s cleaning was carried out manually, using primitive equipment and relying solely on horsepower. Veselý, “Technické problémy,” 1–2. The number of people involved in city cleaning (e.g. street sweepers with brooms, cart drivers, supervisors of street sweepers and landfills, day labourers collecting horse manure, rubbish sorters, pavement sprinklers) rose from 599 to 1,691 between 1889 and 1930. Administrační zpráva královského hlavního města Prahy a spojených s městskou statistickou kommissí obcí Karlína, Smíchova, Král. Vinohradů a Žižkova za léta 1887–1889 (Praha: Statistická kommise král. hlav. města Prahy a spojených obcí, 1891), 65. Statistická zpráva hlavního města Prahy za rok 1930–1933, 248. After World War I, responsibility for city cleaning was transferred to the Building Department of the Prague City Hall, where the task was delegated to experts, including technical engineers and hygienists. Andělín Merta, “Vývoj pražské městské správy od roku 1922 do roku 1945,” in Pražský sborník historický IX (Praha: Orbis, 1975), 147–95. Jana Konvičná et al., “Pražské městské hospodářství v letech 1784–2000,” official site of Archiv hlavního města Prahy, accessed on 7 June 2026, https://www.ahmp.cz/index.html?mid=46&wstyle=0&page=page/docs/vyvoj-prazske-samospravy-II-B.html This change marked the advent of new technical and organisational solutions – such as the introduction of new types of waste bins, dust-free waste loading and transfer, motorisation and mechanisation, and plans for the construction of an incinerator. “Svět za Jana Nerudy a dnes. Popelová záležitost,” Světozor, Vol. 41, No. 28, 11 July 1941, 330.

As in other European cities, solid waste management in Prague was a combination of several evolving approaches.

A traditional practice, long widely adopted in keeping with the motto “out of sight, out of mind”, Melosi, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” 621–40. was dumping waste in all sorts of places – typically in less frequented corners of the city or beyond its boundaries. As part of the city’s clean-up efforts, municipal landfills were established to collect waste. However, the city’s growth gradually made it necessary to build additional landfills. For some time, the largest landfill was the one in Libeň; other large landfills were later established in Žižkov, Dejvice, Střešovice, and Vysočany. By the early 1920s, their number fluctuated around 22, AHMP, MHMP I., Minutes of the City Administrative Bodies, inv. no. 502, City Council Meetings, May–June 1926 (Minutes of the 19th meeting of the Prague City Council of 14 May 1926). “Technická hlídka,” Národní listy, Vol. 63, No. 253, 15. 9. 1923, 4. “K projektu stanice na spalování pevných odpadků v Praze,” Národní listy, 1927, Vol. 67, No. 146, 28 May 1927, 9–10. and they were so overcrowded that they posed a significant aesthetic and hygienic problem. A pressing issue in the public sphere was that, as Prague expanded, the landfills gradually found themselves within the city’s built-up areas, “K projektu stanice na spalování pevných odpadků v Praze,” Národní listy, Vol. 67, No. 146, 28 May 1927, 9–10. blocking new construction. “Stanice na spalování popelu v Praze,” Lidové noviny, Vol. 32, No. 601, 30 November 1924, 5. Suburban municipalities vehemently opposed the establishment of new ones, citing health risks. Administrační zpráva obce královského hlavního města Prahy a spojených s městskou statistickou kommisí obcí sousedních Karlína, Smíchova, Král. Vinohradů a Žižkova za léta 1893 a 1894 (Praha: Statistická kommise král. hlav. města Prahy a spojených obcí, 1896), 222–23. In 1926, the middle-class, intellectually oriented independent daily Lidové noviny wrote about the emergence and growth of dumps: “Over time, such a tip forms a small heap, then a pile, a mound, and eventually an entire mountain range, where mountain hiking could be boldly practised, were there a somewhat pleasant mountain atmosphere.” “Spalovací stanice odpadků v Praze,” Lidové noviny, Vol. 34, No. 94, 21 February 1926, 6. From 1923 onwards, Prague moved away from municipally managed rubbish tips. At the city’s expense, all landfills were “cleared away and levelled”, Vladimír Holeček, Vývoj odstraňování pevných odpadků z domácností v Praze (Vysočany: Spalovna odpadků ve Vysočanech, 1937), 3. but this did not resolve the issue of unofficial dumps or the piling up of waste in densely populated neighbourhoods. The contemporary press mentions five actively operating rubbish dumps in Prague at the end of the period under review (the turn of the 1920s and 1930s). Ibid., 5.

In Prague, the filling in and levelling of uneven terrain, such as mines, sand pits, ravines, or other depressions, was relatively limited. Such sites were not available within inner Prague, whilst transport costs were a key problem for more remote areas. Even large-scale projects foundered on these issues. In the 1920s, for example, the City of Prague held negotiations with the Prague Ironworks Company regarding the backfilling of one of its ore mines in Nučice with Prague ash, but the estimated cost of over a million Kč (Czechoslovak crowns) to transport it to a site less than 30 km from the centre of Prague made the project economically unviable and therefore unfeasible. “Stanice na spalování popelu v Praze,” 5.

Another option for dealing with Prague’s waste, or at least part of it, was to repurpose it. During the period under review, Prague’s waste collection system generally distinguished between street sweepings, household waste, ash and horse manure, which were mostly placed separately in designated areas at the landfills. Further sorting (aside from unorganised scavengers and poor picking through rubbish) took place only to a limited extent. This was because potentially usable materials were either disposed of at home (burned) or sold to door-to-door traders dealing in rags, bones, leather, etc. Kurz, Šetřte uhlím!, 95–104. Bělina et al., Dějiny Prahy II, 191. Stružková, “Odpady v 19. století v Praze jako příklad interakcí města a jeho okolí,” 60–61. Meanwhile, progressive, economically oriented Czech newspapers reflected with admiration on foreign advancements and approaches to waste sorting. For example, an article in the periodicals Průmyslník and Rolník described in detail the organisation of work at a London rubbish dump:

Waste sorting in Prague remained imperfect, haphazard, and poorly organised; one cannot speak of a system. In Prague, which had a strong and nearby agricultural hinterland (the so-called “golden strip of Bohemia” – the Elbe Valley, less than 30 km from the centre of Prague), one of the key methods of managing waste was its reuse as agricultural fertiliser.

For Prague, waste incineration was not an option during the period under review – the establishment of an incinerator was only beginning to be considered and discussed at the time. Although Prague had already been exploring new technical solutions in the first decade of the 20th century (and had been approached by foreign firms with offers and brochures), AHMP, MHMP I., Department XVI – for markets, slaughterhouses and city supplies, ref. no. d 12/3 and d 12/15, box 89, collection of documents (pre-WWI). negotiations only began to take a more concrete form in the mid-1920s. In 1926, Škoda Works in Plzeň, Czechoslovakia’s largest engineering firm, approached the City of Prague with a project that was eventually implemented. AHMP, MHMP I., Minutes of the City Administrative Bodies, inv. no. 502, City Council Meetings, May–June 1926 (Minutes of the 19th meeting of the Prague City Council of 14 May 1926). A competing project was submitted by the Prague engineering firm Breitfeld-Daněk. “K otázce zřízení pražské stanice na spalování odpadků,” Národní listy, Vol. 67, No. 146, 28 May 1927, 10. The incinerator in the industrial suburb of Vysočany began operations in 1934 and completely redefined Prague’s existing waste management mechanisms. Vladimír Holeček, Spalovací stanice odpadků s teplárnou a elektrárnou ve Vysočanech (Praha: V. Holeček, 1932). Holeček, Vývoj odstraňování pevných odpadků, 5–11.

Fertilisation and the art of managing it are hallmarks of modern agriculture. In the 19th century, public education in the Bohemian lands focused on improving fertilisation in every respect, both in terms of quality and quantity. As early as the 1850s, the influential progressive Czech agricultural journal Hospodářské noviny recommended that farmers use other sources of plant nutrition alongside farmyard manure, namely so-called waste manure consisting not only of household waste but also of various waste collected in public spaces – such as dust and mud from roads, clay and sludge from clogged sewers, ash and building debris. Fertiliser produced in this way “was to be the peasant’s pride”. Josef Vetta, “Navedení, kterak si hospodář vypočísti může, mnoho-li k vyhnojení svých pozemků, dobytka držeti má. Dokončení,” Hospodářské Noviny, Vol. 6, No. 51, 405. Compost, in which the above-mentioned components were gathered, turned, and aerated several times a year over a period of 1–3 years, Josef Jettmar, Rukojeť praktického hnojaření čili návod, jak má rolník upravovati různá hnojiva a jak jich upotřebiti ku zvětšení svých sklizní (Praha: J. Otto, 1889), 25–26. Václav Vilikovský, Zbožíznalství hospodářské a zemědělsko-průmyslové (Praha: MZRČ, 1923), 75–76. František Duchoň, Hnojařský slabikář. Stručná příručka o výživě, hnojivech a hnojení hospodářských zvířat, 3rd revised edition (Praha: Edvard Leschingr, 1929), 25. remained highly valued even after industrial fertilisers had come into use. However, industrial fertilisers were initially affordable only to larger farms. In peasant farming, they were still regarded as a “rare commodity” as late as the 1880s. Jan Janžura, “Dělejme komposty!,” Rolnické listy hospodářského spolku politického okresu Sedlčanského, Vol. 2, No. 6, June 1886, 71–72. Even later, it was common on a single farm to combine, alternate, and mix different types of fertiliser, depending on the nature of the soil, the crops grown, and the availability and price of fertilisers. The described practice is documented by a survey conducted by the Czech Agricultural Council in 1901. A specific example is provided by the management of large estates in the immediate vicinity of Prague (Klecany, Přemyšlení and Brnky), each comprising 200–400 hectares of land: “The method of farm management is entirely modern and intensive. A herd of about 40 head of cattle allows for rational fertilisation with manure, amounting to about 500 q per hectare every four years. In addition, a considerable amount of artificial fertilisers is used, averaging 700–800 q of phosphate, 150–200 q of Chilean saltpetre and 400–500 q of kainite, not counting the sludge waste from the sugar factory (about 10,000 q) and Prague waste (about 5,000 q) for composting”. – “Velkostatky Klecany, Přemyšlení a Brnky,” České listy hospodářské, Vol. 9, No. 9, 1901, 333. Výsledky šetření (agrární anketa) poměrů hospodářských i kulturních zemědělského obyvatelstva v království českém v letech 1898–1900. Z původních prací vyšetřujících komisařů (Praha: Zemědělská rada pro království České, 1901), 830.

Solid waste in Prague also provided a range of components suitable for composting. These included, first and foremost, horse manure, mud and dirt from the city streets – so-called street sweepings; followed by organic waste from marketplaces and household waste (organic kitchen waste, ash). Karel Morava, Hnojiva přirozená i umělá a prsť v zahradnictví (Písek: Jan Hruška, 1906), 9–41. Manure from the winter covering of fountains, waterworks and water pipes, where it served as insulation against freezing, was also a potential source for agricultural use. AHMP, MHMP I., Main Registry – Section B, records 1881–1890, ref. B 29/11, collection of documents relating to public tenders for horse manure. The most highly prized product was always horse manure, which was sold directly by municipal yards with stables and was also responsible for the high fertilising value of street sweepings. Household waste collected from individual homes at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries had a lower fertilising capacity. According to research in France, the fertilising capacity of urban waste was roughly half that of stable manure. Mašek, “Odstraňování a využití městských pevných odpadků,” 77.

The main advantage of compostable urban waste was its low cost and availability in large quantities. Presentations on the benefits of using urban waste increasingly drew on chemical analyses of its fertilising properties, intended to convince peasants of its effectiveness. Various data from different sources were used, but all shared the same final recommendation regarding the suitability of using solid urban waste in agriculture. Prague’s waste, as a valuable fertiliser, was still being promoted in the Czech environment in the 1920s, with appropriate scientific backing. As early as 1925, Venkov, the official journal of the Government Agrarian Party, published an article referring to research in Switzerland, where the use of urban waste was reportedly, in some cases, “more effective than fertilisation with farmyard manure or artificial fertiliser”; the following uses were mentioned: peatland cultivation, sugar beet cultivation, and vegetable cultivation. “Zužitkování městských odpadků v zemědělství,” Venkov, Vol. 20, No. 18, 21 January 1925, 7. Adolf Ernest, “Přehled zemědělského pokroku. Výzkum – pokus – kontrola,” Venkov, Vol. 19, No. 234, 4 October 1924, 10.

The primary objective of the original business plan put forward by the supplier, i.e. the City of Prague, was to address the urgent problem of reducing/disposing of the growing volume of waste for reasons of aesthetics (rubbish dumps “growing into veritable mountains”) and hygiene. The elimination of health risks – groundwater pollution, rubbish dumps as breeding grounds for flies, microbes and rodents, which could be a potential source of disease and epidemics; odour and dust caused by the transport of open railway wagons carrying rubbish and ash – became increasingly significant, particularly after the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Mašek, “Odstraňování a využití městských pevných odpadků,” 77. H-n, “Spalovací stanice odpadků v Praze,” Lidové noviny, Vol. 34, No. 94, 21 February 1926, 6. A striking example was the dysentery epidemic in Prague in 1922, the spread of which was linked to the Vysočany landfill and resulted in 200 people being infected and 8 deaths. Jaromír Nečas et al., Praha přírodovědecká, lékařská a technická. Odborný průvodce k VI. sjezdu československých přírodozpytců, lékařů a inženýrů v Praze 1928 (Praha: VI. sjezd čsl. přírodozpytců, lékařů a inženýrů, 1928), 129.

From an economic perspective, the city’s interest in selling solid waste as fertiliser gradually declined. The widening gap between the rising costs of cleaning the city and the revenue generated from waste sales was becoming a problem. We have reliable data for the late 19th century indicating that the financial contribution from the sale of waste to the city budget covered approximately 10% of the costs of cleaning the city (e.g. in 1898, the costs of cleaning the city amounted to 244,963 gulden and revenue from the sale of household waste, including ash, amounted to 26,746 gulden). Administrační zpráva královského hlavního města Prahy a spojených s městskou statistickou kommissí obcí Karlína, Smíchova, Král. Vinohradů a Žižkova za rok 1898, 257. A decade later, in 1909, according to data from the technical engineer Čížek, the ratio of revenue costs had deteriorated (revenue from the sale of rubbish amounted to 35,783 gulden, i.e. 4.1% of costs). Čížek, “Péče o čištění českých měst,” 190–93. As the volume of solid waste steadily rose, the city was able to sell an ever-smaller proportion. Between 1901 and 1905 alone, the proportion of rubbish and ash sold fell from 88.3% to 64.4%, leading to their accumulation (see table 1). Nevertheless, the sum obtained from the sale of waste was still considered sufficiently substantial: “too significant to allow the city’s revenues to be reduced at the expense of modern methods of disposing of such waste through incineration and chemical processes”. Administrační zpráva královského hlavního města Prahy za léta 1905, 1906, 1907, part 1 (Praha: Statistická komise královského hlavního města Prahy, 1911), 632–33.

Following the creation of Greater Prague in 1922, the profits from the sale of solid waste were negligible within the city’s waste management. In 1925, Prague spent 21.78 million Kč on city cleaning, but the item in the city’s financial statements entitled “Removal of solid waste by rail and to the tip”, which included rubbish, horse manure and ash, recorded a profit of only 0.23 million Kč, i.e. a mere 1.1% of the city’s cleaning costs. AHMP, MHMP I., Minutes of the City Administrative Bodies, inv. no. 533, City Council Meetings, July–August 1926 (Minutes of the 31st meeting held on 27 August 1926). After 1926, when the Jeneč cooperative was established, the sale of urban waste to peasants was highly unprofitable – the costs of transport, together with a flat-rate fee paid to the cooperative, amounted to 3.2 million Kč in the financial statements. Holeček, Vývoj odstraňování pevných odpadků, 5. The collection and disposal of solid waste, with its growing volume and stagnant (slightly volatile) demand, were logistically difficult to manage. The City of Prague was approaching a critical situation – waste management reliant on peasant collection was inevitably collapsing; health and other considerations, as well as public opinion, did not allow a return to the original practice of landfills. Although plans for the construction of an incinerator had been in progress since 1926, a relatively long period of several years had to be bridged.

From an agricultural perspective – the demand side of the market – several key factors shaped the purchase of waste as fertiliser. In the 1920s, the tone of specialist treatises shifted (in line with both foreign and domestic experience), and they no longer rated waste fertiliser very highly. This marked a shift from original enthusiasm to, at the very least, reserved opinions. Attention was drawn to the risk of farm animals being injured by nails, shards and fragments, or of damage to agricultural machinery, which persisted because of imperfect sorting of solid waste. The composition, quality and quantity of household waste and street sweepings fluctuated – they were difficult to predict, varying by season and by city district (working-class districts, middle-class districts, and the affluent villa districts). “Komíny spalovací stanice začínají kouřit,” Národní listy, Vol. 73, No. 326, 28 November 1933, 2. Mašek, “Odstraňování a využití městských pevných odpadků,” 77. Kurz, Šetřte uhlím!, 102–03. “Hnojivá hodnota pražských smetků,” 18–20. The fertilising potential of street sweepings declined as a result of the motorisation and electrification of urban transport, which replaced horse-drawn power, and the fertilising potential of household waste declined due to a reduction in the proportion of ash caused by the incipient transition of households to gas heating. Bělina et al., Dějiny Prahy II., 337. Whilst the use of waste fertilisers could lead to increased yields, it could also result in crop diseases (e.g. potato scab Peasant F. Červený explains his experience with liming and explicitly warns against mixing ash and street sweepings into barn manure, as this causes scab on potatoes, i.e. their infection by a bacterial or fungal pathogen. “Well then, let us not begrudge a few crowns and buy pure powdered lime for fertilising, if possible without additives, and let us not buy the cheapest, yet worst-quality waste”. Fr. Červený, Vápněte k jetelům!, Milotický hospodář, orgán českého Kravařska, Vol. 49, No. 11–12, November–December 1938, 342–43.). Furthermore, fertilising with urban waste could only be beneficial for a limited time, “until the soil becomes saturated”. Veselý, “Technické problémy,” 1–2.

Between the 1880s and the 1930s, peasants gradually stopped using Prague’s urban solid waste as fertiliser. As late as the 1870s and 1880s, demand for so-called waste fertiliser was so high that public tenders were issued, and small-scale farmers queued for hours with their carts outside the landfill to collect it. By the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a well-developed rail transport system was in place, which the city used to stimulate demand in its immediate vicinity. As a result, demand remained sufficient, and peasants were willing to pay for the waste. By the 1920s, however, the situation had changed entirely. The peasants from Jeneč were unable to fulfil their ambitious business plan. The cooperative’s collaboration with the city did not develop as anticipated. The City of Prague, overwhelmed by waste, more than doubled the number of waste wagons sent to Jeneč (17,000 railway wagons in 1929), whilst at the same time, problems arose over payment for the promised free transport. Josef Sechtr, “Socialistické způsoby,” Venkov, Vol. 24, No. 69, 21 March 1929, 4. The cooperative tried to expand its client base through advertising, seeking customers who would purchase waste fertiliser year-round, “Zemědělcům v okolí Prahy,” Venkov, Vol. 22, No. 274, 19 November 1927, 12. but demand for waste from peasants was insufficient. Positive trends in the prices of industrial fertilisers, which had already become standard in the interwar period, also worked against waste fertilisers. Prokop Jandek, “Proměna propagace umělých hnojiv v českých zemích/Československu v podmínkách kartelizace trhu 1890–1938,” in Miloš Hořejš, Eduard Kubů, and Barbora Štolleová, eds., Od počátků reklamy k modernímu marketingu. Průzkum trhu a odbytové strategie firem ve střední Evropě 19. a 20. století (Praha: NTM, to be published in 2026). Sales were so low that by 1928 the cooperative in Jeneč was offering them for spreading and fertilisation free of charge, at a rate of up to 15 wagons a day. “Advertisement,” Národní listy, Vol. 68, No. 266, 25 September 1928, 8. Yet even this failed to increase interest in them. The dump in Jeneč grew unchecked, and the natural consequence was the cooperative’s gradual decline. It is no exaggeration to say that the market for waste fertilisers had practically collapsed just before the incinerator was put into operation.

In Prague, the system for utilising solid waste in agriculture persisted for a surprisingly long time compared with other major European cities. It remained the core of waste disposal until the early 1930s. In the 1880s–1930s, when devising strategies for solid waste disposal, the city sought to streamline a practice that had proven itself over many decades, seeking tools to improve it (in the sense of expanding its territorial reach), rather than replacing it with a different system. Although Prague was familiar with modern methods of waste disposal by incineration (Brno, then the second-largest city in the Bohemian lands, had had its own incinerator as early as 1902), the fact that Prague was surrounded by highly productive agricultural land with a high capacity to absorb fertiliser delayed the city administration’s decision to build an incinerator. The deteriorating quality of waste fertiliser and the increasing availability of substitutes reduced its appeal to peasants. Existing literature generally emphasises the hygienic, aesthetic and economic reasons that led cities to change their waste management practices when establishing modern waste disposal systems. From the perspective of the research presented in this study, we add that, in the case of Prague, the countryside itself played an active and significant role in the decline of the use of urban waste as fertiliser in rural areas.

This study was carried out with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic, institutional support RO 0826 (Eduard Kubů), and the Cooperatio programme, the research area of History, conducted at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (Barbora Štolleová).