Presentation short abstract

The paper develops a research agenda for political ecologies of animal waste/waste animals. Examining the portrayal of animals as waste producers, consumers, infrastructure, and wastable lives, we problematise who or what can be waste; and unravel the politics of governing waste animals/animal waste

Presentation long abstract

This paper outlines a research agenda for political ecologies of animal waste/waste animals. We chart how political ecology and cognate disciplines discuss the relationship between animals and ‘waste’, focussing on the following overlapping framings: animals as waste producers and consumers; as waste infrastructure; and as wastable lives. We critically unravel these waste categorizations through empirical examples from our respective research, whilst disentangling the political processes and power relations that differentially value nonhuman lives, their labour, and their ‘animal materials’ (Onaga & Douny, 2023).

Looking at animals as waste producers (and consumers), we examine the potential of pig slurry to be both a pollutant of water bodies as well as an untapped resource for renewable energy in rural areas. Considering animals as waste infrastructure, we explore how jellyfish and shrimp are transformed from ‘trash animals’ (Nagy & Johnson, 2013) to resources for bioremediation and ocean ‘cleanup’. Finally, examining how animals are rendered as waste, we look to animals such as wild boars that are categorised as ‘disease reservoirs’ and sacrificed for the health of humans and nonhuman others in the management of infectious animal diseases or zoonoses.

Through these diverse examples we extend the conceptual remit of ‘posthuman political ecologies’ (Margulies & Bersaglio, 2018) – which theorises the political subjectivities of nonhumans – to: (1) critically examine who or what can become ‘waste’ and how; and (2) consolidate an agenda for political ecologies of animal waste/waste animals which sketches out more ‘care-ful’ alternatives for relating with nonhuman animals.

Presentation short abstract

This paper provides ethnographic flesh for the notion ‘discards’ as a given form of waste-animal in relation to the operations of a fishmeal plant in Senegal. It contributes to theorizations of waste-animals in political more-than-human geography.

Presentation long abstract

This paper provides ethnographic flesh for the notion ‘discards’ as a given form of waste-animal in relation to the operations of a fishmeal plant in Senegal. Here and elsewhere alongst the West African seaboard, this industry has boomed over the past 15 years to meet the soaring demand for cheap protein that is increasingly needed to feed farmed animals globally. In Senegal’s largest artisanal fisheries town, a foreign fishmeal plant has been operating since 2009. Prior to its establishment at the request of local notables and state officials, fishers who successfully returned ashore with fish often discarded part of their catches at sea due to the rapid saturation of then available market gateways. In this paper, I show that the rendering of discarded fish as cumbersome waste-animals to be done away with was conducive to the establishment of the plant as a sanitary solution but soon-to-become burdensome extractive infrastructure. For the setting up of the plant would rapidly prompt intensified fisheries exploitation to supply distant markets, which in turn left local human populations increasingly at pain to access scarce and expensive fish for their everyday diets. I thus argue that discards – fish and otherwise – are best understood as slippery forms of un/desirable waste-animals whose situated in/utility to global capital fluctuates in relation to other asymmetrically valued human and nonhuman lives. This paper thus contributes to theorizations of waste-animals in political more-than-human geography by illuminating the logics that subtend their commodification and the grim effects thereof in postcolonial junctures.

Presentation short abstract

Morralla -small, edible Mediterranean fish historically devalued- shows how animals become socially produced as “waste.” Strategies to reduce or revalorise bycatch highlight its potential role in sustainable seafood futures.

Presentation long abstract

Morralla. 1. f. Worthless or of no value; 1. f. Mixture of small, assorted fish.

In Mediterranean fisheries, these meanings converge to describe a mix of small, edible species that have been historically devalued for economic, cultural, and culinary reasons. This reflects a utilitarian vision of nature in which only species generating stable profit are recognised as valuable, while others are relegated to marginal categories. Morralla thus exemplifies how animals become socially produced as “waste,” not through intrinsic qualities but through shifting economic, cultural, and institutional valuations.

Importantly, morralla is specifically Mediterranean, emerging from the region’s multispecies trawl fisheries. Morralla refers to the marketable fraction of bycatch, not to bycatch as a whole, which also includes protected or non-marketable species. It denotes the portion that enters the market in a marginal way and acquires a cultural semantic of “low value.”

There is no exact English translation. Automatic renderings as trash fish or whitebait are misleading: trash fish refers to species so undesirable they often end up as fishmeal, while whitebait denotes juvenile fish with high gastronomic value. These contrasts highlight morralla’s specificity as a Mediterranean configuration of value, marginality, and multispecies relations.

Sustainable fisheries debates hinge on two strategies: increasing gear selectivity to reduce bycatch (and thus morralla), or revalorising it through diversified consumption (potentially transforming, or erasing, the category). Examining how morralla species are classified, valued, and rendered invisible in research and management reveals broader “shadow ecologies” of marine waste animals and their potential repositioning in sustainable seafood futures.

Presentation short abstract

This paper examines the Asian carp's trajectory from the Yangtze and Amur rivers to Romania’s state socialist fisheries since 1958. We explore its transformation from a biological infrastructure and political economy project to "waste" species, highlighting the political and ecological dynamics.

Presentation long abstract

This paper analyzes the trajectory of the Asian carp, introduced to Romania in 1958 from the Amur and Yangtze rivers, through the lens of political ecology. Initially heralded as a cost-effective biological infrastructure designed to mitigate the proliferation of aquatic vegetation in fisheries, the Asian carp was viewed as a means to enhance the productivity of economically significant local species. During the socialist era, it became integral to the political economy (its adaptation was called a “revolutionary process”), serving as a source of affordable protein for the population in the 1970s and 1980s.

However, following the collapse of the socialist regime and the subsequent implementation of neoliberal policies within agro-food sectors, experts in fish farming were laid off, fisheries were privatized, and many were drained and repurposed for agriculture. The Asian carp "escaped" into the Danube River, marking its transition to an invasive species.

Through a combination of archival research and long-term ethnographic studies involving bureaucrats, fisheries experts, and local fishermen, this paper seeks to uncover the processes by which species are classified as invasive. We critically examine the socio-political mechanisms that contribute to the designation of a species as a "waste species," as well as the state practices and regulatory frameworks surrounding these classifications. By situating our findings within the broader context of political ecology in Eastern Europe, we aim to contribute to discussions on the dynamics of state fisheries management and the conceptualization of "waste species" in both socialist and postsocialist contexts.

Presentation short abstract

Drawing on urban theory and more-than-human scholarship, this paper explores how working donkeys are enrolled in urban waste economies across the Global South. We interrogate what it means to be a ‘waste animal’ in uneven infrastructures where all labouring bodies are subject to stark inequalities.

Presentation long abstract

Situated within urban political ecology and more-than-human scholarship, this paper explores how working donkeys, through the processing of human refuse, are enrolled in urban waste economies across the Global South. Drawing on qualitative research in Lamu (Kenya), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) as well as cities in South Asia, this paper explores how working donkeys are produced as ‘waste animals’ through their association with low paid ‘dirty work’, where both humans and animals suffer a myriad of oppressions, from discrimination to exploitation. From collecting and carting tonnes of solid waste, to picking through landfill (inadvertently ingesting plastic and other harmful material), donkeys are deeply embedded in the material and political ecologies of sanitation and waste management, yet their labour (and labouring bodies) is often invisible. Wounds and injuries due to hazardous working conditions, poorly fitting harnesses and overloading, alongside malnourishment and digestive issues, are common among donkeys working in the highly informal and precarious waste sector. Engaging calls to recentre nonhuman labour in urban economies and services, we interrogate what it means to be a ‘waste animal’ in uneven infrastructures, where all working class bodies (human and other-than-human) are subject to stark inequalities. Going beyond this, we foreground notions animal agency and subjectivity, highlighting the sentient lifeworlds of working donkeys and what it means to perform ‘waste work’ as an animal body – suggesting an ecological politics that calls into question the conditions of human-animal suffering and centres those most vulnerable to the slow violence of waste.

Presentation short abstract

This paper examines the everyday lives of abandoned bovines in a Himalayan marketplace of India, framing them as moral and political agents whose survival challenges their rendering as waste, and provokes rethinking of human-animal labour relations, ethics, and bovine politics in contemporary India.

Presentation long abstract

In this paper I examine the everyday mobilities of ‘unproductive’ cows and oxen abandoned on the streets of a small Himalayan marketplace in Uttarakhand, India. I rethink these unwanted bovines as moral and political subjects whose embodied practices of survival and persistence constitute forms of claim-making on shared more-than-human spaces and resources. Through ethnographic attention to their everyday movements, experiences, and representations, I explore the vital agencies of these political beings which resist and limit the rendering of their lives as wasted or disposable within local agrarian and dairy economies. My analyses show how the presence and interactions of old, disabled, and infertile bovines in the marketplace unsettled local people’s moral worlds, provoking reflections on shared interspecies vulnerabilities, kinship, and responsibility. These multispecies encounters also redirected shared gaze towards shifting social relations shaped by economic and cultural transformations in the region. My empirical insights in this paper problematise predominant scholarly, popular, and policy framings of abandoned street bovines in India as either passive ‘victims’ of capitalist commodification or mere ‘nuisances’, living on and creating waste in public spaces. By situating the ethico-political claims of these animals within the broader context of rural capitalism and cow protection politics, I draw out the implications that the political agencies of these wasted or wastable animals have for helping reorient the contours of human-animal relations and bovine politics in contemporary India (and beyond), opening pathways towards more just multispecies futures.

Presentation short abstract

Cesspools pose a serious public health and environmental risk. While the management of these spaces is recognized within governance frameworks, I argue that these harms are often portrayed as easily solvable, downplaying the severity of the harms in the Ontario industrial livestock sector.

Presentation long abstract

Livestock production across Canada is increasingly industrialized, a trajectory characterized by fewer and much larger operations. One of the central managerial challenges associated with industrial livestock operations relates to the enormous volumes of feces and urine produced by large and dense animal populations, which require continual supplies of freshwater and chemical disinfectants to decontaminate enclosures. The ensuing slurry generated from this combination of biowastes, water, and chemicals cannot be immediately spread across agricultural landscapes and is instead stored in large cesspools and processed before application to fields. There is a significant and underappreciated burden associated with the storage and processing of these animal biowastes, including noxious fumes (which carry a powerful stench), heightened respiratory illnesses for neighbouring communities, greenhouse gas emissions, and water pollution risks. This paper examines how this multidimensional burden is governed in Ontario, reviewing key policies that shape cesspool management and how environmental and public health risks are expressed through these governance frameworks. Ultimately, I argue that although the provincial government recognizes that cesspools pose significant environmental and health risks, which are often presented in narrow terms that suggest they can be resolved relatively easily, downplaying the scale and severity of the socio-ecological harms they produce.

Presentation short abstract

Chickens are fed waste, become waste, and produce waste. We examine how waste circulates and is transformed in UK poultry production. We reveal how circular economy logics shape multispecies injustices, exposing who benefits and who is rendered expendable from metabolic waste management.

Presentation long abstract

Chickens are fed waste, become waste, and produce waste. This paper examines the political ecologies of waste in the UK chicken industry. Rather than focusing solely on pollution management in animal agriculture, as is common in recent metabolic geography scholarship (Barua 2024; Searle et al. 2025), we develop a broader analytic that traces how diverse material flows become, and unbecome, “waste.” Our analysis centres on three intertwined waste streams in UK poultry production: (1) animal feed, in which chickens consume repurposed industrial residues, such as by-products from bioethanol production; (2) animal by-products (blood, viscera, necks, etc.) reprocessed into foods or feed, or burned for energy; and (3) poultry litter and manure converted into organic fertiliser. Each generates distinct environmental and health consequences: plantation expansion tied to bioethanol and soya production; metabolic disorders linked to cheap and readily available ultra-processed foods; and river pollution from fertiliser runoff. Drawing on stakeholder interviews and multi-sited ethnography, we trace the epistemic, discursive, and material transformations through which “wastes” acquire new value and circulate as resources. We interrogate the circular economy narratives that legitimise these transformations and the justice implications they produce for human and more-than-human health. Ultimately, we highlight the multispecies trade-offs and asymmetries of value embedded in waste conversion: what is lost, who benefits, and which lives are rendered expendable in the pursuit of circularity.

Presentation short abstract

This paper focuses on the expansion of biomethane production through the anaerobic fermentation of animal waste in Northeastern Italy. It examines the shifting distinctions drawn between edibility and inedibility, safety and toxicity, value and waste, in the name of a European energy transition.

Presentation long abstract

This paper considers the implications of the expansion and development of biomethane production through the anaerobic fermentation of animal waste in Northeastern Italy. In the European context, not only has “Factory farm gas” been framed as a renewable energy source and a crucial transitional tool in moving away from fossil fuels, but it has also been positioned as critical infrastructure—essential for both national and EU-wide energy security and independence from Russian natural gas. What are the consequences of rendering a diverse and messy array of animal substances—such as feces, urine, gut contents, paunch, and slaughterhouse grease—into energy like any other, yet, also supposedly unlike any other? What kinds of ideological, ethical, and organizational work are required to reduce these highly varied substances into a generic energetic substance like methane? Drawing on ethnographic research in and around biomethane facilities, I consider three microbially saturated vantage points: the proxy discourses used by biomethane entrepreneurs promoting renewable energy solutions; the experiences of rural residents navigating uncertain environmental exposures; and the leaks from containment infrastructures that purport to separate farmed animal matter from their wider surroundings. In doing so, I examine the implications of the shifting distinctions drawn between edibility and inedibility, safety and toxicity, value and waste, in the name of a European energy transition.

Presentation short abstract

"Awkward animals" question regimes of authority regulating their presence or absence in cities; bring to the fore the contestations, negotiations and subversions already inherent in dominant visions of the urban and animals therein; and inspire new perspectives on urban place-making with animals.

Presentation long abstract

Urban animals are subject to, and sometimes challenge, distinct regimes of authority. These regimes build on, and reproduce, categorisations of animals, for example, as domestic or wild, or as protected or invasive species. They differ from each other concerning legal frameworks, discursive framings of animals and related spatial practices. The regimes of hunting and hygiene largely frame animals as threats to health and ecosystem balance, as surplus and disposable. Such framings are reflected in more or less brutal practices, ranging from egg removals over different ways of making places uninhabitable to killings. Conversely, the protection regime frames protected animals as desirable and necessary for human life. Taken together, these regimes speak of the pursuit of separating healthy life from bodies causing disease. The presence of two specific animal species in Hagen and Wuppertal, wild boars and raccoons – categorised as an invasive species –, as well as evolving debates within and beyond the regimes of authority supposed to regulate them, expose the limits of, and breaks between, these regimes as well as contestations beyond them. This concerns specifically the racoons‘ and wild boars‘ disposability, which is subject to debate within and beyond the regimes of authority regulating their absence or presence in cities. Thus, raccoons and wild boars are “awkward animals” in that they question the regimes and related spatial orderings; bring to the fore the contestations, negotiations and subversions already inherent in dominant visions of the urban and animals therein; and inspire new perspectives on urban place-making with animals.

Presentation short abstract

Rats are the ultimate waste animal/animal waste as they depend on human waste streams. In fact, they thrive on our waste streams so well, that they are considered highly killable animals. I present here findings from interdisciplinary projects on rats, waste, circular economy, and citizenship.

Presentation long abstract

Waste binds humans as part of the community and the environment: even though we give up excess matter, it might be of interest to other species who find it useful. Many of these species, such as waste-dependent rats, are considered as unwanted. Indeed, rats are so killable that lethal methods, such as rodenticides, have "off-target effects" that are tolerated to a point. As these methods have not won "rat wars", focus has changed to prevention, i.e, reducing food availability for rats. Waste management is thus closely regulated with official rules and societal norms. Or: rats shine light on the shortcomings of circular economy just by appearing.

Drainage plug is a small, yet crucial part for waste bins: taking it away lets the washing water to drain from the bin, but it also allows the rats to gnaw their way into the bin. While rat control professionals agree that it is highly consequential part, there is a disagreement on whose responsibility it is to make sure that the plug is there.

Urban infrastructure comes with individual responsibility, as normative image of "good waste citizen" is produced at the waste bins. There the guidance where to put the garbage, (inside the bin, not outside) enhanced with a picture of rat within a prohibited symbol. Rat control is human control; thus rat presence is sign of wrongly behaving humans.

As the real survivors of the Anthropocene, rats interrogate what is waste, who is citizen, and what are loopholes in circular economy.

Presentation short abstract

The paper interprets the pigeon culling in the German town of Limburg as conflicts over the “right to the city” of wild animals. It shows how pigeons, by producing waste, are constituted as waste and rendered killable. Through the construction as societal outside they lose their right to live.

Presentation long abstract

In 2023, the small German town of Limburg decided to cull hundreds of pigeons living there by breaking their necks. This controversial decision ignited disputes that transcended Limburg’s borders and attracted international media attention.

The presentation examines how pigeon waste emerges as a central issue in the political debates surrounding the culling. It interprets these debates as conflicts over the “right to the city” of wild animals. The right to the city, conceived in a multispecies way, must always be considered alongside the more fundamental “right to live.” When the right to the city is denied, animals can easily be made killable.

Empirical research conducted in Limburg reveals how pigeons, by producing waste, are simultaneously constructed as waste and subsequently rendered killable. Public discourse equates pigeons with their excrement that is considered harmful to human health and economic resources. The birds are framed as societal outside, entangled in symbolic associations with disease, dirt, and trash—elements that should be removed from a sanitized and economically productive city. Through the construction as the Other pigeons lose their right to live in the city.

The example of pigeon culling in Limburg illustrates how urban society conceptualizes and governs its relationship to wild animals within a capitalist logic of exploitation, but also how these animals exert agency and claim a right to the city. Since politics of killing are contested by political advocates and the pigeons themselves, they are a starting point for thinking about human–animals coexistence in the city.