Abstract
What would waste relations be like if they were conceptualized as waste care rather than waste management? To explore this inquiry in practice, we examine two different ethnographic examples of dwelling with waste: (1) smart home technologies as part of ageing healthcare services in regional Australia and (2) bokashi composting as an alternative waste practice in urban Finland. Bringing together scholarship on infrastructures from design anthropology, and waste studies with new materialist and feminist perspectives, we propose infra-ecologies of waste care as an analytical tool to unpack complex care relations embedded in everyday waste practices.
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Notes
- 1.
As one of the authors has argued elsewhere (Kinnunen et al., 2020; Valkonen et al., 2017) when waste becomes defined as a resource, the model ends up creating demand for the material, which fuels waste generation. The other problem, of course, is that the circulation is never 100%. Waste cannot be totally designed away, there is always leakage at some point of the process.
- 2.
https://ym.fi/en/waste-legislation. Institutional waste management is defined by the Finnish Waste Act, which follows Waste directives of European Union. However, municipalities interpret and organize the law differently, which means that regional waste assemblages vary slightly. See (Kinnunen et al., 2020; Valkonen et al., 2017).
- 3.
For practical organization of Finnish recycling system, see, for instance https://www.infofinland.fi/en/living-in-finland/housing/waste-management-and-recycling.
- 4.
Recently, the method has also become known as “Urban composting.” For more information about bokashi composting as a method, see Kinnunen (2021).
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Acknowledgements
The vacuuming example comes from the project Intelligent Home Solutions for Independent Living. This project acknowledges the people of the Jukumbal, Kamilaroi/Gomeroi and Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands this research was undertaken. We pay our respects to all our ancestors and Elders, past, present and emerging. We appreciate the time and contribution of all the householders who participated in this research, who welcomed us into their homes and shared their valuable insights and data. This project was funded by the Australian Government Department of Health through a Commonwealth Home Support Program Innovation grant. In partnership with: McLean Care, Monash University Emerging Technologies Research Lab, and Deakin University CADET Virtual Reality Training and Simulation Research Lab.
The bokashi example is based on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted within bokashi practitioners as part of the following research projects: The fieldwork was conducted within Waste Society. Living with material overflows (Academy of Finland, 317914) research project, and developed methodologically in Envisioning Proximity tourism with New Materialism (Academy of Finland, 324493). Veera would like to warmly thank all the research participants, especially “Tiina,” for generously sharing their bokashi experiences with her.
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Kinnunen, V., Duque, M. (2022). From Waste Management to Waste Care. In: Valkonen, J., Kinnunen, V., Huilaja, H., Loikkanen, T. (eds) Infrastructural Being. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15827-8_7
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