Mediating metabolic change. The sanitation industry’s response to the introduction of tout-à-l’égout in late 19th-century Paris

While research on the historical interactions between industry and environmental regulations usually focuses on large-scale enterprises and infrastructural projects, many transitions in the urban environment and metabolism were only made possible by infrastructural changes on private property, where they relied on businesses operating on a smaller scale. This paper focuses on the transition in human waste management, from cesspools via the système diviseur to tout-à-l’égout, in late 19th-century Paris, to evaluate how the sanitation industry interacted with the regulations that underpinned this metabolic transformation. In reaction to these regulations, plumbers and sewer contractors both broadened their business activities and sought to bend the rules in their favour by presenting their expertise as being in line with the government’s public health agenda. In this way, both in their lobbying narratives and in their changing business practices, small-scale entrepreneurs in the sanitation industry played a crucial role as mediators of metabolic change.