Daniel Sosna (2024) Giving Up Waste Disposal in Europe: Beyond Environmental Concerns. Waste and Value conference, 25-26 April 2024, Copenhagen

This paper examines the role of sacrifice in transforming waste management in the European Union (EU). I follow a general conceptualization of sacrifice as a sphere of social relations and possibilities associated with giving up. Building upon Mayblin and Course (2013), who acknowledge the efficacy of the sacrificial logic beyond ritual and taking into account the dynamic notion of sacrifice (Edwards 2017), I explore the ways in which giving up is mobilized in waste management to prevent a crisis. To substantiate my claim, I focus on the transformation of waste management in Czechia, where landfills have become a synecdoche of all wastes, and the end of landfilling has become a necessary sacrifice. Interestingly, the dominant Czech discourses contrast with the practices on the ground and silence the degree of dependence of the new technologies on the old ones. The ongoing transformation of waste management is much more than just a shift from linear to circular imaginaries, technological advancement, and an attempt to reduce wastefulness. It seems to be an essential social mechanism that attempts to restore balance and sustain life via an act of giving up. This understanding of giving up falls on the fertile soil of a long-term cultural tuning to sacrificial logic that persists despite operating in a country often considered one of the least ‘religious’ in the world.