Searching For Value: Scavenging In A Dutch Recycling Station

Abstract

What occurs in the afterlife of discharged items, how do they become social objects? In this fieldwork thesis, conducted in a Dutch Afvalscheidinhstattion (recycling station), I examine the practice of scavenging. In so doing the reader shall see how waste is much more than an inertial matter but rather a social actor capable to entangle social realities, interactions, and future visions over sustainability.