This article examines the capacity of local authorities to stabilise the governance of municipal waste and the political effects of this transformation of local public policies. The article adopts an analytical framework inspired by the sociology of public policy instruments and follows the policies municipal powers build on the ground to cope with a pressing issue. We are interested in the case of Lebanon because of the ongoing, and still pending trash crisis that resulted in wide protests. We studied three municipalities outside of the capital region, Saida, Zahle and Bikfaya, where different kind of innovative solutions (technologically and/or politically) have been implemented. There, we document the elaboration of the SWM policies regarding contracting, financing, communication, spatial planning, service districting and environment. We also analyse the political effects of the stabilisation of these assemblages of instruments from the perspective of legitimising of local power actors, the building of a territory of local or regional cooperation and the relationships between the local and the central governments. The research relies on press review and local surveys (interviews). Results show that political choices depend upon the kind of local political networks and the degree of emergency that frames the temporality of decision. In doing so, we carefully read the local and local/national political dynamics that allow, constrain or prevent the policy choices. The findings show that policy choices are very strongly dependent upon the kind of local policy networks. Conversely, they also highlight that the institutional frameworks at the local and national scale leaves them wide margins of manover.