Abstract
The unprecedented changes to Earth's ecological and geological processes are surely matters of care for education, yet, as feminist writers have pointed out, care is frequently undervalued and invisible. Care is loaded with tensions and complications and is messy, situated and never innocent or neutral. Moreover, caring for, with and about an increasingly damaged planet can seem overwhelming. In this presentation, I will explore notions of care as they relate to my current research investigating young children's relations with waste in their educational settings. Waste is a part of the everyday life of schools and early learning settings, yet it is frequently hidden from view. My research investigates what happens when we follow the entangled agencies and practices of waste and care and how they "come to matter" (Barad 2007). I explore how care includes an element of doing and thus offers a possible space of response-ability in a world that faces potentially catastrophic climate change.