Leftover Consumption as a Means of Food Waste Reduction in Public Space? Qualitative Insights from Online Discussions

Larissa Diekmann,Claas Christian Germelmann

doi:10.3390/su132413564

Abstract

A considerable amount of food is discarded in canteens every day. This waste has created a countermovement, where groups of mainly students purposefully choose to eat other consumers’ plate leftovers instead of buying fresh meals. This phenomenon highlights two opposing narratives: leftovers as food waste versus leftovers as edible food resources. Using a thematic analysis, we investigated 1579 comments from German news sites and their corresponding Facebook sites related to this countermovement. Thereby, we aim to better understand what consumers associate with the consumption of other consumers’ plate leftovers. Our study demonstrates that the consumption of plate leftovers is shaped by the regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive system. Furthermore, associations with the consumption of plate leftovers depend on whether this food decision is perceived as a collective or individual consumer decision. From a consumer movement perspective, food leftover consumption is associated with a sense of community and food waste reduction for idealistic or environmental and social reasons. From an individual consumer behavior perspective, food leftover consumption is associated with satisfying hunger but considered a threat to health and social order. Our findings can inspire food service organizations to develop targeted interventions for plate leftover reduction.

Highlights

Plate leftovers, and some of them even despise this consumption in principle: “unbelievable: this is how far the Germans’ world-saving madness against any kind of waste has come
We found that consumers’ associations with the consumption of other consumers’ plate leftovers are depended on whether the behavior is perceived in the context of individual consumption or collective consumption
In addition to the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive contextual factors, our study showed that plate leftover consumption is associated with various motivational associations

Summary

Introduction

A recent study of the United Nations Environment Programme [2] suggests an even higher amount of food wastage grounded in an underestimation of the consumption level (i.e., households and food service). Every year, around 931 million tons of food are disposed of by retailing, food service, and households alone. In the EU-28, households, processing, and food service are the three main drivers of food wastage along the food supply chain [3]. Looking at the disposal of all food resources (i.e., edible and inedible or avoidable and unavoidable food wastage), the largest amount of food wastage occurs in households, followed by processing and the food service industry [3,4,5]. For Germany, Schmidt et al [6] estimate that around 6.14 million tons (52%) of food are wasted in households, 2.17 million tons (18%) are lost in processing, and

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