Abstract: This contribution aims to examine the issue of the wasted landscape in Calabria, Italy, as the main problematic scenario of a semiotic investigation into the ecological and cultural crisis of the region. Faced with the proliferation of definitions in various fields of the humanities (terrain vague, empty areas, friches, interscape, underutilized areas, 'in-between' spaces, drosscapes), this contribution seeks to explore the role of semiotic ecology in the context of environmental and design discourses on the wasted landscape. Central to the discussion is the distinction between an emic and ethical approach, the competition of values invested in waste sites, the challenges of affordance and the distal dimension internalized in forms of coexistence with the wasted landscape, and finally, adventure as an "intimate" translation process of alterity and as a principle of invention and cultural emancipation. From a mereological perspective, Calabria emerges as a problematic environment that exhibits waste through the morphology of the territory, architecture, and design practices. The contribution aims to investigate, finally, the figurative scope of waste and its integration with the various levels of immanence, in a heuristic attempt to make operational the indeterminacy of the wasted landscape. References: Fontanille, J., “Territorialités : Des formes de vie en leur domaine.” In Fontanille, J., Formes de vie, Liége, Presses universitaires de Liège, 2015 Basso Fossali, P., Vers une écologie sémiotique de la culture, Perception, gestion et réappropriation du sens, Limoges, Lambert-Lucas, 2017