![The issue of waste in the works by Olga Tokarczuk](http://fp.amu.edu.pl/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/KJakubowicz_TheIssueOfTheWasteByOlgaTokarczuk_ForumOfPoetics_24_2021-01-250x354.jpg)
Klaudia Jakubowicz
ORCID: 0000-0002-5949-0759
A b s t r a k t
The paper discusses the issue of waste and plastic, especially plastic bags, in the works by Olga Tokarczuk. The author considers what waste is in today’s civilization. Waste is a marginalized, omitted element in the human existence. This character of waste is used by Tokarczuk in her prose, where waste appears in full sight only to disappear a moment later. She presents plastic products as an example of a new, better species, which may prove to have surpassed man in terms of survival of the fittest. In her essays and short stories examples of a new spirituality related to waste segregation can also be observed.