Waste

It is the possibility of transformation and misuse that makes waste available to other systems of objectification. But you have to be willing to see and feel this. Inventing a new materialism involves a responsiveness to objects that is mutually transformative of both people and things. Waste captures the attention not simply of those in desperate need but also of those able to imagine different uses, able to reanimate it. This is where necessity meets creativity and where ethics meet imagination.
Hawkins. G., The Ethics of Waste: How we relate to rubbish

This extract from Hawkins' book is a concise explanation of the way rubbish has many possibilities for what it could become and it is not simply a dead matter. The transformation, or alchemy, of rubbish is limited to the creativity in the one who re-animates it. It can change when placed in the hands of someone who can see a new use for something that is regarded by society as waste.