This article explores the transition towards a circular economy in the context of household food waste practices. The research concerning the circular economy has mainly focused on engineering or the processes of production, manufacturing, business and industry. However, the transition towards a circular economy requires, in addition to new technologies, infrastructures and innovations, a societal change and a change in everyday practices. In this article, we address this by examining the everyday practices of food waste reduction in households as ethical work. We claim that the intertwined practices, institutions and policies of the circular economy create moral categories and responsibilities in everyday food consumption. Thus, the transition towards circular economy requires everyday ethical work carried out by consumers. However, our analysis also brings out some possible challenges related to this transition that has not yet been accomplished. Our research materials consist of 26 food waste diaries collected from Finnish households and participant observation in 4 leftover cooking workshops organized with the Finnish Martha organization. We adapt Michel Foucault’s conception of ethics, focusing on the constitution of ethical subjectivity in food waste practices. Moreover, we utilize practice theoretical approach that has been widely used in food waste and sustainable consumption studies and connect it with Foucault’s theory. Our results suggest that in order to understand the circular economy as a moral economy, it is crucial to note the moral complexity of everyday life that results from partly contradictory ethical sensitivities and practices.

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The purpose of this study is to identify and categorize the discursive practices through which consumers negotiate a lifestyle-related identity in online lifestyle consumption communities. The empirical case is a very active community of consumers who adhere to the Low Carb -High Fat (LCHF) diet. The paper contributes to communal consumption literature by showing how a lifestyle identity and the community evolve together. Focusing on an online community with lifestyle focus differentiates this study from previous research because nutritional choices influence the consumers' everyday life in a comprehensive manner. By employing a netnographic analysis on discussion board messages, eleven discursive practices are identified. These practices are categorized according to confirming/challenging and self-directed/community-directed dimensions. The paper provides a typology of online community dynamics, emphasizing the importance of challenging practices for community development. It also has important implications for companies who wish to understand food lifestyles and develop online platforms for their customers.

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This study describes and analyses how practices organise temporality to reduce food waste. The study builds upon the material turn in practice theories and an ontological approach that together highlight emerging relations between humans and non-humans in practices. Three theoretical propositions are constructed that inform the empirical analysis. The study utilises empirical qualitative data from a Finnish blog campaign ‘From Waste to Delicacy’. The study identifies four bundles of practices organising temporality: scheduling, pausing, stretching and synchronising. Within these bundles of practices, potential food waste is enacted differently: as not realised food waste, revitalised food, refuted food waste and harmonised food (waste). The study produces novel understanding about temporal inter-relations between humans and non-humans – the dance of agency – in household food waste reduction.