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The efficient and sanitary management of infectious waste is an essential part of the humanitarian response to any disaster, including the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, in many contexts within the Global South, waste management systems are poorly equipped to handle these waste streams during periods of normalcy, let alone during times of crisis. The purpose of this article is draw attention to a number of existing inequalities that define infectious waste management practices globally, with a critical eye to how they constrain poorer nations' ability to respond and manage their own Covid-19 outbreaks. In particular, the work draws on the authors' extensive research, experience, and activism at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, to understand how waste management practices will inform and react to mitigation efforts and to propose a number of practical steps that can be achieved in the short-term, as well as towards long-term structural transformation. Ultimately, this conversation is meant to contribute to a more inclusive and critical waste management studies discourse.

‘Waste’ is everywhere, a common aspect of daily life in both the West and the Global South. However, the ways in which we as individuals understand it as a problem is far from universal. It does not exist independently from the people it affects, rather, waste, as a problem, is continually made and remade through human practice. The purpose of this article is to explore how and why certain ‘waste’ items are and become understood as problems. We adopt Foucault’s (1984) notion of ‘problematisa-tion’, as an analytical lens for conceptualising processes of problem formation through the eyes of two different groups working within and on the margins of Mzedi Dump Site in Blantyre, Malawi: subsistence maize growers and informal waste pickers. Drawing on extensive qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork, our findings suggests that for those working at Mzedi, waste problematisations are shaped by the tangible: the visible, and often painful impacts that Mzedi’s hazards have on their lives and livelihoods. However, the ultimate problematisation of waste lies in its utility, i.e. ‘good’ waste, is internalised based on its value. ‘Bad’ trash however, is problematised because it has no value, and is therefore considered useless, a problem taking up time and space that could be utilised more profit-ably. Understanding these processes of problem formation, and the degree to which waste problematisations are personal and/or socially constructed, has important ramifications for the adoption of appropriate waste management strategies and should inform a more nuanced and inclusive waste management studies discourse.

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