What is waste?
The word waste comes from the Latin word vastus meaning vast, void or a desert.
Duck and the law of waste
At the height of its power, the Latin Roman Empire extended into Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco. The empire's north African boundary was the Atlas Mountains. Below this lay the vast inhospitable expanse of the Sahara Desert. Empty of water and filled with sand and a savage climate the Sahara was a place of utter despair which offered little reward or value to the Romans.
Two thousand years later, we now know this vastus (the Sahara) holds vast energy potentials. It has oil, gas, iron ore, manganese, copper and phosphate. And it's inhospitable desert heat and winds offers an immense source of alternative energy. Furthermore geologists and space shuttle radar have shown that millions of years ago huge rivers flowed through the Sahara onto the Mediterranean. Even now underneath the desert sands lie vast underground aquifers.
This is typical of the story of waste. It is often paradoxical. Its history is topsy turvy, constantly changing and challenging. At one moment in time something is waste. Then at another moment it is valued. One man's waste is another man's treasure.
What waste is constantly changes and grows. What remains constant about waste is that it is problematic and that someone, at some time, is going to try to make money out of using it or trying to get rid of it.
Vastus Vasta Vastum. A few more words on waste
Rubbish bin Parramatta NSW, September 2008
Putrid, valueless, exhausted, devastation, rubbish, debris, hocus-pocus, egesta, dejecta, fraud, uncultivated, futility, garbage, extravagance, litter, refuse, vandalized, contagion, vomit, pus, trash, over abundance, scrap, cast-offs, rejects, stubble, scourings, shavings, dust, muck, cobwebs, corruption, germs, adulteration, grime, slag, corrode, swill, atrophy, hogwash, dregs, prodigal, squander, impoverish, labor in vain, clinker, brans, urine, turds, inefficient, snot, ear wax, corrupt, dwindle, swill, prostitute, overtax, rummage, impoverish, glut, lavish, oversupply, supewrabundance, oxic, mephitic, stink, stench, fetor, fumes, shame, faulty, disgraced, poverty, hazardouus, defilement, misapplication, emaciate, starve, useless, effete, ravishment, atrophy, consume, debilitate, enfeeble, splurge, squander, suborn, murder, vacuum, vacuous, vacant, wanting, sharn, stale, destitute, abort, eradicate, exterminate, suppress, sabotage, monopolize, devour, oriental sulfur, occidental sulfur, coprology, scatology, dynga, ordure, obsess, vanish, drivel, kickbak, decease, turpitude, derision, intemperant, grubby, adulteration, obloquy, venality, crumbs, depreciate, hardship, catastrophe, affliction, defeat, sterile, arid, misemploy, unemployed, oxidize, demoralize, skite, demean, disgrace, shrink, shrivel, bankrupt, drain, pervert, gobble, hoover, indulge, spoliate, blaspheme, befoul, sap, evacuate, bleed, lonely, untilled, incarcerate, lorn, derelict, godforsaken, condemned, bleak, snuff out, extirpate, raze, plunder, impairment, lynch, smother, suffocate, electrocute, assassinate, massacre, fallow, parched, unfruitful, sterile, carbon humanum, dissipate, deterioration, spoilage, falsification, noxious, radioactivation, tailings, unprofitable, idle, jobless, redundant, inert, mothballed, dirty, disease, infection, feathers, bones, guts, fat, hair cuttings, leakage, impure, damage, loss, excess, scum, septic, unclean, defaced, faeces, pooh, ruin, impure, contaminated, abuse, blemish, drunkenness, obsolescence, overburden, vandalism, pollution, destruction, decay, rot, entropy, scandal, cloaca ,ponzi scheme, slur, undermine, gamble away, exhaust, sap, sink, slander, stain, taint, tarnish, odium, degradation, mutilate, wreckage, ravage, collapse, desolate, gangrene, secondary, vulture, annihilate, extinguish, overwhelm, wrinkle, wane, wither, vivotoxin, vivisection, vitiatescavenger, noise, chatter, necrosis, ooze, sewerage, stormwater, smog, reek, uninhabitable, leavings, sweepings, unsaleable, surplus, chaff, husks, by-products, unvalued, overlooked, hangover, offcuts, brine, odour, fumes, rust, plague, pestilence, ash, filth, poison, virus, miasma, abandoned, deluge, insensible, defunct, deluge....