Carceral Recycling: Zero Waste and Imperial Extraction in Nazi Germany.

This article examines the central role of "carceral recycling"—forced labor in Nazi camps and prisons focused on waste reclamation—in the economic and genocidal machinery of the Nazi regime during the Judeocide. It argues that Nazi policies linked racial purification, resource scarcity, and imperial expansion through a system that exploited incarcerated populations to extract value from human bodies, discarded materials, and waste products, integrating ideas of cleanliness, security, and order rooted in Western imperial histories. Key Nazi enterprises such as the German Equipment Works (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke, DAW), TexLed (Gesellschaft für Textil und Leder Verwertung mbH), and Ostindustrie GmbH (OSTI) exemplified this nexus of recycling and genocide by processing textiles, metals, and personal effects of murdered Jews using slave labor. The article situates Nazi carceral recycling within broader continuities of colonial and prison labor systems, highlighting how economic rationales and racialized securitization converged to justify exploitation and mass murder. It also draws parallels to contemporary prison labor in recycling industries, underscoring enduring intersections of waste labor, racial capitalism, and social marginalization.