The mounds of Estremoz marble waste: between refuse and reuse

Abstract

Waste is commonly, considered an effect separated from the economic processes of production, construction, and consumption. This is seen both in the politics of recycling and in the legal apparatus regarding the reintegration of industrial wastelands, in the aftermath cessation of the exploitation. Consequently, this management represents merely the ‘after’ attempts that try to minimize the effects of waste negatively affecting our lands and lives. In contrast, this paper addresses the interdependence between production and waste by making visible the ‘mounds of marble waste’ in Estremoz Anticline (Alentejo, Portugal). These mounds of marble waste allow us to demonstrate that the intervals of ‘artificial time’, as explained by Cedric Price (1996), that is, that use, reuse, mis-use, dis-use, and refuse, are not only successive but coexistent (Kümmel 1968).