A Critical Cartography of Waste Education in Australia: Turning to a Posthumanist Framing

Abstract

There is no doubt that the current Anthropocene geologic era is directly a result of human malconsumption. Australian schools have readily engaged in a wide variety of environmental education programmes to tackle the results of one form of this malconsumption: waste. Waste has indeed become a central concept of environmental education in Australia for the past four decades. In this Chapter, waste education is critically examined in an Australian context, followed by an in-depth cartography of waste education programmes. What this cartography reveals is that while there is a reasonably strong culture of waste education and recycling in particular in Australian schools and communities, research also shows that waste per capita increased in the same period. Thus, contemporary waste education programmes and pedagogies are acting on the margins of malconsumption. This chapter, therefore, troubles the stewardship model of environmental education that lies at the heart of these Australian waste education programmes, contending that these programmes need to move beyond a focus on one aspect of the waste cycle (recycling) to a new model of waste education that is rooted in post-humanist educational theory. A posthumanist waste education offers a new kind of imaginary through disrupting and diverting malconsumption at its core/s; humans and their relationships with the more-than-human or nonhuman.