Garbage and scraps are `left over', without ever becoming entirely superfluous: they are planned, managed, avoided, forgotten and rediscovered, they necessitate systems of order and transform themselves and our society. Instead of recreating the illusion of a sustainable, `garbage-less' society and sweeping away everything else that is left over, the essays in this volume view rubbish and scraps as a critical mass, as a practical and theoretical phenomenon which enables new perspectives in fields ranging from ecology and philosophy to media studies and sociology, and which demands a reconsideration – and for which it is worth having something left over.
