A Better Way to Help People Reduce Food Waste

Source: Courtesy pf Sarah Chai/Pexels

Wasting food is not good for the wallet or the environment. Nevertheless, many households waste a staggering amount of food, resulting in a yearly waste of 1.3 billion tonnes globally. This is the equivalent of one-third of all the food produced for human consumption. Just imagine how many people that could be fed with all the wasted food.

From an environmental point of view, every time food is thrown away, so are also the resources involved in the production, such as the energy used to harvest and transport it as well as the packaging it comes in. If food waste can be stopped, it has been estimated that 6-8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced. To put this into context, the WWF has reported that in the U.S. alone, food waste produces 32.6 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Difficulty reducing food waste at home

To date, many studies investigating household food waste reduction have focussed on educating people or the use of nudges—changes made to how different choices are presented to consumers to alter behaviours. However, the efficiency of those methods and whether they work in the long term has been debated.

Most commonly, people waste fruits and vegtables. This might be because they go off quicker, or that they require more preparation. The latter, in particular, may be off-putting as people tend to have busy lives and are often tired at the end of the day. Thus, coming home to cook a meal that requires mental effort is not high on the priority list. Instead, they look for something quick and easy to make—meaning that the vegetables get left on the shelf until they go off.

New insights

Recently, some colleagues and I published a paper with data showing that that a short period of conscious effort can encourage lasting changes in the amount of food people throw away at home. This was based on data from over 150 households in the UK that were asked to measure their fruit and vegetable waste.

Initially, we measured the waste for 6 weeks. During this time, half of the households were asked to log the fresh fruit and vegetables they bought and when their purchases had to be used (based on to the packaging expiration date and guidelines given by the researchers). The log was placed on the fridge as a reminder of what needed to be used each day to avoid waste. Additionally, participants received daily text messages reminding them to check their food log and add any newly bought fruit and vegetables. The other half of the households involved in the study simply measured their food waste but had no reminders to use their fresh produce.

We had anticipated that the households that received reminders would reduce their waste more effectively. However, what we found was that there was only a small difference between the two groups. Instead, simply measuring fresh produce waste made all households more likely to think about what they were wasting. It also made participants feel as if they could control the amount of food they were throwing away.

It does not take long to change behaviour

Our findings suggest that asking people to measure their fruit and vegetable waste, every week, for six weeks kickstarts a thinking process that guides people’s behaviour in the future. All the households reduced their fresh produce waste by 108 grams, on average, a week. This was maintained for 6 months after the initial six weeks of recording waste. Thus, we demonstrated that only a short period of conscious effort is necessary to encourage longer lasting behaviour change.

While 108 grams a week may not seem like much, it can definitively make a difference. If only 1,000 people would make a 108-gram weekly change, it would save over 9.5 tonne of CO₂ a year. This is equivalent to 1,140,000 smartphone charges. Thus, using strategies to make people think about food waste for short periods can change our planet’s health.