In reporting on the potential contribution of a community-based waste reduction initiative to sustainable development, our object is to examine the role that such initiatives may play in community regeneration and participative democracy. In the context of changing relationships between government and the individual, we ask whether communities are able, and willing, to accept the self-governing role which is being pressed upon them. We also question the extent to which responsibility for achieving sustainable development can be devolved. The Waste Reduction in the Community Project ran in five diverse communities in Bristol and South Gloucestershire between 1995 and 1998. We examine the goals of the initiative, its procedures and the activities within it; and we review the kinds of achievements that might comprise 'success' in the context of sustainable development, both for the communities themselves and in a wider context. We discuss the outputs and outcomes of the project in relation to these; and reflect on the value of such initiatives in the current climate of modernisation of local government and community regeneration.