Plastic bags

This article reflects on the meanings of waste in our everyday lives. It argues that a changing relation to waste is a changing relation to self. It traces shifting rubbish discourses and practices, looking particularly at how waste has become morally problematized: at how ‘disposal’ has become ‘management’. Its aim is to examine how a new ethos of waste might be created beyond environmental moralism. For the problem with moral codes and rulings is that they often deny the complexities, paradoxes and visceral registers that mark our relations with rubbish. Using Deleuze and Foucault, an alternative ethics of waste is proposed, one that foregrounds relationality and the arts of transience rather than separation and mastery. For, to be open to waste, to be mindful and careful with it, is to be open to our own becomings.