Introduction: waste studies as a field

Waste studies is a new and vibrant academic field. In the last couple decades, not only has the number of publications whose central concern is waste from a not strictly technical perspective exploded but there are now two open-source journals dedicated to this scholarship. The older one is Discard Studies, an online collection of mostly shorter pieces written from a critical, activist perspective, and the more recent and more traditionally scholarly journal is the Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. Various disciplinary encyclopedias and annual reviews have also published ambitious summary and programmatic articles on waste research. Anthropology, sociology, geography, and interdisciplinary journals have all dedicated special issues to various waste-related topics in the last decade. A handbook on waste studies could be said to be overdue.