Living with wastes: plastics, life forms, and storytelling

This article considers a shift in the representation of recycling set against the realities of ecological crisis in which anthropogenic pollution has risen beyond the capacity of waste management. As the ecological priority of waste removal and recycling is gradually eroded by the dawning prospect of living with wastes, the paper explores what this cohabitation might mean in terms of our relations to the world marked by the borders drawn between self and others, living and non-living, and nature and culture. The article explores the way the anthropogenic wastes threaten to dislodge the ideas of human habitat from their conceptual bedrock forged by a series of binaries such as civilisation and wilderness, orderliness and mess, home and abandoned places. It also considers the possibility of storytelling that envisions the prospect of living with wastes, one that no longer prioritises human interests and conveniences.