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Writers have long been fascinated with ideas and materials of waste, from "wastelands" and "wasted time" to the junk filling garbage bins and global landfills. As the adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” suggests, "waste” is what’s troublesome or unwanted and also what can be transformed anew, holding different meanings across cultures and communities. We will explore literature about waste from writers such as Louise Erdrich, Joshua Bennett, and Chen Chen alongside critical essays and popular media such as Pixar’s WALL-E and Netflix’s Love Death + Robots to ask: when and how does something become waste? How is waste used as creative material? How does waste’s meaning change contextually, and has waste been historically aligned with and salvaged by marginalized identities?