What meets my eyes on this sunny day in early September is a green and flowering island with glimmering ponds and massive windmills beating the wind. They fill the air with a slow and steady beat. Among the buzzing insects and screeching birds, it's hard to believe that beneathe a thin layer of soil, more than ten meters of white, hard phosphogypsum extends down into the sea, a material testimony of the Swedish city of Landskrona's past as a centre for fertilizer production. This island exists because synthetic fertilizers exist. In the by-product phosphogypsum, naturally occurring heavy metals have accumulated, together with fluoride, radon and high levels of phosphate. Despite its distressing history as a deposit for polluted waste – the construction began in 1978 – the artificial island locally known as Gipsön has today become a site so popular that the number of visitors needs to be regulated. How come this toxic dump, measuring approximately 36 hectares, has gathered such widespread attension and become a ceremonial site gathering people from near and far in a yearly celebration of multispecies herirages and futures? Sometimes, unexpected alliances occur around a common cause and that is precicely what happened on Gipsön. Let's rewind.