Art’s Uncomfortable Answer: Rethinking Tourism circularity through Waste

This chapter explores the paradoxes of sustainability and circularity in tourism through the conceptual and material lens of waste. Drawing on the Wasteocene framework (Armiero, 2021), it critically examines how both material and symbolic waste—generated by overtourism and the commodification of local cultures—reflect structural inequalities embedded in contemporary capitalism. Two contrasting case studies in the Veneto region, Venice and the Dolomites, serve as experimental contexts for Cultural Living Labs (CLLs) based on art-led, participatory methodologies. Within these labs, waste cooking oil (WCO) became a central metaphor and material for rethinking circular economy narratives and activating situated, collective forms of knowledge. Through creative practices such as cooking, drawing, and storytelling, local participants reimagined waste as a cultural, affective, and epistemological resource rather than as residue. The artistic process revealed how communities can “care for waste” by transforming discarded materials and memories into critical and imaginative tools for resistance, belonging, and sustainability. The chapter proposes an alternative model of circularity—one grounded in care, relationality, and cultural re-signification rather than in techno-managerial efficiency.