Objects can be understood as a network of relations and practices, as a crossroad of natural, discursive and social dimensions. From this perspective waste represents a challenging semiotic token. It is an object de-semantized of its value, an emblem of the anti-heritage. The so-called Wastocene spontaneously evokes the problem of communication and inheritance. First and foremost, waste is a problematic object: how can future generations deal with this “difficult inheritance”?In this respect, recycling and upcycling of plastic furnishes one of the most extensive instances of interdependence between two chains of processes – cultural and material - that constitute a single genesis of individualization.Plastic potentiality has been tested by exploring its malleability and pliability (tires, celluloid tapes, cellophane, clothes) as well as its toughness and strength (radios, telephones, turntables, then computers and household objects). Thus, the manipulation of plastic creates a material medium for the actualization of cultural phenomena such as the globalization of commercial distribution, long-distance communications, popular access to information, the popularization of music, recreational activities, revolution of consumption, the entire audiovisual language and the emancipation of customs.Subsequently, the plastic upcycling techniques allow its dynamics to acquire the characteristic of circularity as they permit its reintegration into the social spaces.The session will highlight how both features - circularity and commensurability between heterogeneous modes of existence - are predicted in semiotics through the theory of enunciative praxis and advance hypotheses on how potentialization is able to hold material and cultural perspectives together in a unique dimension.