The mechanisms of food waste prevention: theory, design, and practice for changing behaviours

Abstract

There is growing international attention to food waste as an environmental, health, economic and social problem. Depletion of resources in producing food and the environmental and economic costs of discarding waste combined with the social, ethical and symbolic values of wasting food, while poverty and hunger are still a global issue. The two 2008 crises – the global food crisis and the most renowned financial crisis – have changed public attitudes towards food. Old certainties about food commodities and security were disrupted and food got new public attention, no longer as a moral issue towards developing countries, but as an internal security problem threatening the Western world (Collier, 2008; McMichael, 2009; Lang, 2010). Such developments certainly provided a favourable context for food sustainability, one where wasting food was considered less desirable and harder to afford and where policy measures tackling food waste could enjoy new visibility and global attention (Evans, Campbell and Murcott, 2013; Manzocco et al., 2016). In 2015, in fact, the UN adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which included a specific commitment to halve food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including a commitment to address post-harvest losses (United Nations, 2015). Similarly, the 2014 Commission Communication promoting a zero-waste programme for Europe and the following 2015 Action Plan for the Circular Economy paid specific attention to food waste, in particular for improving measurement, date marking, food recovery and donation. In 2016, three EU countries – Italy, France and Romania – passed legislation for reducing food waste. If – as it appears – the time has come for action, the evidence base is still uncertain. As agreed by several commentators, how food waste prevention