Waste in the Anthropocene: Practices of Forgetting and New Environmental Awareness

This article discusses waste practices in terms of social order and challenges of the Anthropocene. The first part analyses the role of waste in our everyday practices. Based on M. Douglas and G. Hawkins, it begins with the spatiality and temporality of waste, showing how waste is a matter out of place, revealing the temporal structure of use-discard-forget, exploring the relationship between symbolic order and purification rituals, and connecting practices of forgetting to practices of the self. It then moves on to the challenges of the Anthropocene, which complicate the inside-outside distinction and practices of forgetting. In revealing the challenges of the Anthropocene, the main focus is on our changing attitude to waste due to awareness of hyper-connectivity and the accumulation of insignificant actions, and on the new environmental awareness emerging with its unique reflexivity, imagination, and responsibility. A new awareness is discussed, one that evaluates everything not according to the functionality of objects, but their potential to transform into waste. Finally, it asks how “old” and “new” awarenesses can coexist, shaping the conditions of everyday life in the Anthropocene.