Defining the Anthropocene

The period between the great stink and the great smog saw the current geological age being increasingly viewed as a period during which human activity became the dominant influence on climate and the environment. This period, in which we live today, has been named the Anthropocene and it is the age of waste. Waste is not contained in some vague imaginary ‘out there’, but every place on Earth is a place of waste. We are inextricably entangled with waste in complex global patterns of economical, ecological, political, and corporeal inter dependency. Human togetherness always implies being also together with waste, and we share a joint future with it whether we like it or not.