Capturing Waste or Capturing Innovation? Comparing Self-Organising Potentials of Surplus Food Redistribution Initiatives to Prevent Food Waste

Charlotte A Spring,Robin Biddulph

doi:10.3390/su12104252

Charlotte A Spring, Robin Biddulph

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104252

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: May 22, 2020
Citations: 15	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Calgary, University of Gothenburg

Abstract

The context for this article is the rapid international growth of (surplus) food redistribution initiatives. These are frequently reliant on networks of volunteer labour, often coordinated by digital means. Movements with these characteristics are increasingly viewed by researchers, policymakers and practitioners as cases of self-organisation. The article explores the nature and extent of self-organisation in food redistribution initiatives. Two contrasting UK initiatives were studied using ethnographic methods during a period of rapid expansion. The concept of self-organisation was operationalised using three dimensions—autonomy, expansion and governance. One initiative established food banks in close cooperation with corporate food actors. Its franchise charity model involved standardised safety protocols and significant centralised control. The other initiative deliberately pursued autonomy, rapid recruitment and de-centralised governance; nevertheless, collaboration with industry actors and a degree of centralised control became a (contested) part of the approach. We highlight the interplay of organisational agency and institutional structures affecting the self-organisation of surplus food redistribution, including ways in which movement dynamism can involve capture by dominant interests but also the seeds of transformative practices that challenge root causes of food waste, particularly food’s commodification. Our analysis provides a way to compare the potentials of food charity vs mutual aid in effecting systemic change.

Highlights

Growing awareness of the environmental and social injustices represented by food waste, and a wish to prevent them, has led to a rapid growth in the number of people engaged in surplus food redistribution initiatives, often mediated by information and communication technology (ICT) [1,2,3], in what has been termed ‘a new era of ICT-mediated food sharing’ [4]
We found it useful to refer to the sustainability transition literature below, as our conceptualisation of self-organisation resonates in a number of ways with analyses of ‘social innovation’, another term with broad and potentially divergent appeal [30]
Food waste and food insecurity concerns is a theme raised elsewhere in the literature [51,52], but our analysis suggests that formalised charity governance involves a codification of standards that seeks to maintain incumbent institutional relations, rather than to build decentralised capacity for the experimentation expected of self-organisation

Summary

Introduction

Instead, interested in the potential of surplus food redistribution to contribute to more substantial sustainability transitions This means structurally addressing the over-production of food and the inequitable distribution of food. This will entail achieving a situation where food producers and food consumers are better able to understand food production networks, and are able to exercise their influence over them through price mechanisms, and in ways that enable environmental and social concerns to be more deliberately and more democratically addressed From this viewpoint, we do not assume that all surplus food redistribution activities potentially contribute to a sustainability transition. Understanding factors affecting the capacity of such initiatives to affect waste-generative conditions, rather than manage symptoms, is a key aim of this paper

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