Wasted land, wasted lives: Environmental injustice and the making of a metropolitan backyard in Athens, Greece

This article examines West Attica, Greece, as a politically produced sacrificial “backyard” for the city of Athens, offering a critical environmental justice analysis of the region's transformation into the metropolitan capital's primary waste sink. Through participatory research conducted with affected communities, we trace the political life of the Fyli landfill—one of Europe's largest waste infrastructures—to argue that its perpetual expansion is a spatial injustice engineered through multiscalar governance. We frame this within the “Wasteocene” concept, demonstrating how waste management operates as a mechanism of racial capitalism that externalizes risk onto marginalized frontiers while concealing the costs of metropolitan consumption. The analysis reveals a dual process of wasting: the material degradation of land and bodies through toxic exposure, and the symbolic violence of “toxic narratives” that normalize harm, obscure accountability, and legitimize the disposability of racialized populations, particularly Roma communities. These dynamics exemplify the political creation of urban backyards zones of abandonment where social, ecological, and health vulnerabilities are concentrated to maintain the order and economic functionality of the core city. Despite systemic pacification, emerging “guerrilla narratives” articulate resistance and demand reparative justice, challenging the very logic that renders certain places and people expendable. The case of West Attica thus contributes to broader theoretical discussions on the scalar politics of environmental injustice and the production of sacrifice zones.