Presentation short abstract

This article explores the narratives of waste management executives in Belgium regarding their companies and the sector, and how these can reflect and perpetuate Wasteocene relationships.

Presentation long abstract

Waste significantly impacts the environments in which we live, work, and play. Simultaneously, it is also shaped by the social and spatial practices embedded in these environments.

In our transdisciplinary research, we adopt the Wasteocene perspective (Armiero, 2021), which emphasizes how certain people, materials, and places are made disposable through systemic power relations. The management of the material flows is deeply political, reflecting and reinforcing global and local inequalities in labor and environmental exposure. The waste sector is characterized by high occupational risks, complex transnational processing chains, and environmental challenges. Workers are exposed to hazardous substances and ergonomic strain, particularly in outsourced or informal labor contexts.

In Belgium, waste management is carried out by both for-profit and non-profit organizations. These groups not only tend to cover different waste streams (the former are mostly active in industrial, metal, construction, and plastic waste industries, whilst the latter is active in the waste treatment of electronics, textiles, and other household items), but also inherently have different missions. We explore the narratives of both sectors: how they translate their profit, planet, and people missions and the implications this has for employees' working conditions.

We conducted 60 interviews with waste management executives in Belgium. Through a thematic analysis of their narratives, we examine how managers present their companies and sectors, and discuss how this can reflect and perpetuate Wasteocene dynamics.