Waste as scats: For an organizational engagement with waste

Abstract

This article coins the term ‘scatolic’ to suggest a new way for organizations to think about and engage with waste. Scatolic engagement draws on Reno’s analogy of waste as scats and of scats as signs for enabling interspecies communication. This analogy stresses the impossibility for waste producers to dissociate themselves from their waste and emphasizes the contingent, multiple, and transient value of waste. Correspondingly, the article suggests that organizations grow a semiotic competence at reading waste and develop a sense of responsibility for materials. Adopting a scatolic approach to waste is featured as a way for organizations to deal with waste in the Anthropocene.