Waste Is an Address, Not a Thing

Ask anyone what waste is and they point at a bin. That instinct is the first thing this method has to break, because it hides two mistakes at once. It makes waste a thing, and waste is not a thing, it is a situation. And it makes waste worthless, and waste is only worthless where it happens to be standing.

So here is the working definition this book runs on. Waste is any resource that is thrown away or not fully used, or any step in a chain that is no longer truly needed. Wasted resources, useless steps. And the crucial addendum: the value of your waste almost never lives inside your own silo. It lives at an address in somebody else's. The yellow timetable boards were garbage to the railways and raw material to a design studio. The refinery's CO2 was an emission in the port and a fertiliser forty kilometres away. Waste is an address, not a thing: the question is never "what is this worth?" but "where is this worth something?"