Household food waste: the implications of consumer choice in food from purchase to disposal

Food waste matters - A systematic review of household food waste practices and their policy implications

“…While consumers raise concerns about global warming and the excess use of resources (Tucker and Farrelly, 2015) or express an environmental consciousness through their beliefs and reported behaviours (Parizeau et al, 2015), environmental concerns rank behind other factors when it comes to reducing food waste (Abeliotis et al, 2014;Graham-Rowe et al, 2014;Pearson et al, 2016;Principato et al, 2015;Quested et al, 2013;Stefan et al, 2013;Watson and Meah, 2012). Two studies in the U.S. have found a modest role of environmental concerns with only 40% (Neff et al, 2015) and 58.4% (Qi and Roe, 2016) of respondents expressing concerns about the environmental consequences associated with throwing away food.…”

“…Smaller households produce less waste than larger ones while the amount of food waste generated per capita decreases with increasing household size (J€ orissen et al, 2015;Koivupuro et al, 2012;Parizeau et al, 2015;Quested et al, 2013;Silvennoinen et al, 2014;Stancu et al, 2016;Tucker and Farrelly, 2015;Visschers et al, 2016;Wenlock et al, 1980). Households with children tend to produce more food waste (Parizeau et al, 2015;Visschers et al, 2016), potentially because of time and money constraints (Parizeau et al, 2015), parents paying high attention to food quality (Terpstra et al, 2005), feeling less knowledgeable about how to avoid food waste (Neff et al, 2015), or due to unpredictable eating behaviour and food preferences of children (J€ orissen et al, 2015;Neff et al, 2015).…”

“…Considerable amounts of food waste are given to pets (Wenlock et al, 1980). A focus on disposal practices, such as recycling or composting, often undermines people's motivation for waste prevention (Cecere et al, 2014;Tucker and Farrelly, 2015). For instance, people consider the food that is fed to animals or composted not as waste (Neff et al, 2015;Pearson et al, 2016;Porpino et al, 2015).…”

Food Waste Drivers in Europe, from Identification to Possible Interventions

“…Three main types of motivations can be identified in the available literature: economic, i.e., the possibility to save money by reducing FW; personal gratification from performing efficiently food-related duties, being in control of the problem, and not feeling guilt for FW; environmental and humanitarian motivations, such as to contribute to a reduction of the FSC environmental impacts, existence of people hungry or in economic straits who can benefit from distribution of food surpluses, and social immorality of FW. In general, the economic motivation figures as the main reason for consumers to avoid FW, followed by personal gratification, while socio-environmental reasons are the weakest motivators [18,22,25,27,147,148,175,181,182]. A survey published in 2009 by The Australian Institute [148] even found that the mean value of the food yearly wasted by consumers motivated by money savings in their practices of FW avoidance was significantly lower than the mean value of the food wasted by consumers motivated by environmental or humanitarian reasons.…”

Representations of Food Waste in Reality Food Television: An Exploratory Analysis of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

“…Interventions are usually practical [1,6] and theoretically uninformed. Yet, the definitions and understandings of food waste are not straightforward [2,11]. Whilst research into the transformation of raw ingredients into edible foodstuffs is well established in the social sciences and humanities [7,12,13], there is very little understanding of the cultural processes whereby food intended for consumption is psychologically, socially, and culturally diverted to-or re-conceptualised as, waste [14].…”