The purpose of the study is to explore the many functions of waste in Swedish children’s picture books, television programs, and theater performances from 1969 to 1977, a period that has been highlighted by previous research as notably concerned with green politics, environmental degradation, and recycling. The project claims that Swedish children’s culture, during this period, developed a new understanding of ecology by embracing the collapsing nature-culture divide of the “wasteocene” – the age of waste.

The project is interdisciplinary and combines multimodal discourse analysis with analysis methods from cultural and aesthetical studies on waste to analyze how authors, illustrators, theater, and television program creators encourage children’s environmental awareness by incorporating garbage and trash in their work, aesthetics, and pedagogics. It includes ten picture books, five theater play performances, and four television programs.

The project participates in the ongoing rethinking of the conceptualization of nature and culture of contemporary environmental humanities. It aims to deepen the historical knowledge of Sweden’s today world-famous eco-oriented children’s culture and give new insights on the ability of children’s culture to heighten children’s ecoliteracy and sensitivity towards environmental issues.