This thesis is a fictocritical text framed as A Guide to the Department of Discard Culture — a speculative institute dedicated to interrogating discard phenomena as a subject of cultural analysis. This thesis argues that contemporary human-object relations constitute an emergent ontological crisis, and concludes by calling for an ethics of matter. The author’s film, Solid Waste, is described as critically positioned as surrealist ethnography. Using compassionate phenomenology to contemplate the relationship between civilization and waste, subjects like clutter, compulsive hoarding, and overconsumption are examined using humanist, posthumanist, and Eastern mystical theories. Because complex problems require complex methods, a transdisciplinary approach is positioned to research in both the field and lab, where two primary questions guide this inquiry: How can the perception of waste matter be shifted? And, What is it like to be a landfill? The conclusion offers a letter to humanity on behalf on an anthropomorphic landfill.