Unsettling “reduce-reuse-recycle”: the provocation of wastepaper and “discarding well”

Abstract

This article engages with discard studies scholarship to interrogate findings from a study that set out to deliberately follow wastepaper in an early childhood setting. The study, which used participatory methods positioning teachers and children as research partners, began with purposeful noticing and attunement to paper’s movements and materiality. This attentiveness defamiliarized paper and the ways in which it is known and experienced. It led to questions about the wider systems in which paper is entangled. In this article, thinking with discard studies provokes us to consider the relational systems that involve paper in early learning settings and leads us to question the reduce-reuse-recycle maxim which allows some systems to flourish by diverting attention away from them. The article concludes by suggesting that if we are to discard well, we must become aware of systems that are maintained by taken-for-granted waste practices such as reducing, reusing, and recycling.

Keywords:

• waste
• reduce-reuse-recycle
• environmental education
• early childhood
• discard studies

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to all our research colleagues and participants for their generous and enthusiastic sharing of time, experience, and insights. We are also grateful to our anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful suggestions made this a better paper.

Notes

1 In Australia “rubbish” is a common term used for trash or garbage.