This paper suggests a semiotic perspective that situates the practices of wasting and recycling/upcycling within the general forces of preservation vs. dissipation that regulate any cultural system (Lotman).The relationship between waste and the cultural dynamics of collective memory has already been explored in depth by important authors such as Aleida Assmann (who explores the relationship between waste and archives), Kevin Lynch (author of the posthumous book “Wasting away” on the role of waste in society) and more recently by scholars such as Cornelius Holtorf (who explores the relationship between radioactive waste and cultural heritage).Moving from this background, I will attempt to propose an analysis of the semiotic processes of transformation through which waste is displaced from and then reintegrated into the circuits of the semiosphere, through practices of subtraction and reinvention of meaning that correspond to different modes of sign production (Eco), where upcycling is a reinvention of both the object and the projection of a new code. Semiotics will then be the guiding theory for a “wasteology” (a possible translation of what Paolo Fabbri called “scoriografia” in Italian), which claims that there is a system of waste parallel to Baudrillard's “system of objects”. I will focus in particular on plastic waste, a seemingly " matter out of place” (Douglas) that ends up producing particular “places of waste”.