Contested waste

by Federico Demaria

ISBN: 9781032742816

Published: 2025-07-25

Contested Waste' examines socio-environmental conflicts involving waste pickers in the Global South, uncovering the systemic injustices that underpin contemporary waste policies. Driven by the privatisation of waste management, these conflicts expose the "recycling paradox" while waste pickers make critical, uncompensated contributions to sustainability, they are further excluded by new policies. This book analyses how modern waste policies marginalise waste pickers, triggering conflicts in cities across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Drawing on over 70 conflicts documented in the Global Environmental Justice Atlas, the book explores how privatisation, incineration, and waste enclosures displace informal recyclers and worsen the sustainability crisis. These processes exemplify "capital Accumulation by Dispossession," as waste streams are enclosed and privatised, excluding waste pickers, and "capital Accumulation by Contamination," as environmental burdens are shifted onto...