A potential cause of environmental pollution and human ill-health, waste represents a key challenge of contemporary societies, connected to broader geographies of production, consumption and disposal. At the same time, waste also provides opportunities as a source of livelihood for people who make a living through the work of recycling and disposing of end-of-life products in different regions of the world. Our research understands waste as a complex material and political object that must be understood in geographical and historical context. It includes work on the impacts of historical landfill on coastal ecologies (Kate Spencer), the toxicities of the contemporary solar PV industry (Carlo Inverardi-Ferri) and the geographies of waste picking and recycling across the global North-South divide (Carlo Inverardi-Ferri, Will Monteith). It also includes work on the environmental and human health risks associated with wastewater discharges from the tailings ponds associated with surface mining for bitumen in Alberta, which is among the largest industrial sites on Earth (Jeremy Schmidt).