Takeaway food, waste, and their geographies in workplaces

Abstract

AbstractThis article draws on empirical research to develop an understanding of the social and cultural geography of food and its waste in the workplace. Our aim is to contribute to the wider body of literature on everyday geographies of waste and wasting in relation to food, paying attention to the complex trajectories of the disposal of the waste produced by food consumption beyond the scale of the household. On that basis, the work explores the distinct ways in which the waste produced by takeaway food consumption is managed in workplaces and examines how food consumption and wasting manifest in relation to both workplace contexts and wider sociocultural and material factors in urban China. Such matters are still under‐researched there. Specifically, we identify the different conduits through which food and food packaging become waste in workplaces. Food is transformed into waste soon after it becomes surplus, whereas food packaging becomes waste through two conduits: the conventional way of binning and the alternative way of reusing.