Rebranding Disgust: The "Yucky" Problem of Food Waste

When someone says "food waste," chances are that you immediately imagine a pile of rotting food—gross, smelly, and ugly. The term "waste" evokes a mental image of something inherently disgusting that you probably want to get away from.

Worst still, food waste is also a relatively invisible problem. We simply toss away unwanted food, put out the trash, and it’s taken away for us. Rarely, if ever, do we see what happens next.

These facts help to explain one contradictory finding from research on how to change household food waste management behaviors—that most of us believe we waste very little food at home, yet levels of waste remain stubbornly high and are set to double by 2050.

Adding to this discrepancy between our perceptions and behaviors is the fact that food waste occurs in the privacy of our homes, with no one to observe what we are doing and shame us into taking action.

A Massive But Miserly Problem

Food waste’s inherent lack of both appeal and visibility makes this a particularly challenging topic to engage consumers on. And this is a huge issue given that each of us puts an entire meal’s worth of food—around 500kcal—directly into the trash every single day. This wasted food is responsible for almost 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and is produced using 25 percent of the world’s available fresh water.

Unlike other important food system challenges, such as promoting more sustainable diets, there is very little scope to make food waste a sexy conversation starter. Indeed, even the most attractive way to "spin" messaging on food waste—that preventing waste saves you money—has mixed connotations.

On the plus side, highlighting cost savings may be attention-grabbing and motivating. On the minus, cutting costs and waste—by buying less, buying cheaper, misshapen foods, or eating leftovers—evokes ideas of frugality and thrift. Neither are necessarily positive traits, as they link to notions of lacking generosity or being a poor provider or a bad host.

Rebranding Food Waste

To accelerate action on food waste, what is needed now is a far more appealing way of talking about this problem—one that sidesteps some of the more negative implicit associations people hold towards waste.

Here, we can take cues from research on other pro-environmental behavior changes. For example, considering the use of evocative, taste-focused language to promote more sustainable diets is a good illustration of what works. This framing has been proven to spark positive mental images relating to food that stimulates desire and appetite and thus influences people to choose more plant-based options rather than meat.

And it’s not just in the food space where re-framing messages works. Re-naming second-hand clothes in more positive ways—such as "pre-loved," "vintage," "original," or "retro"—has been extensively used to promote the resale of used clothing.

What is needed for food waste, it seems, is a new terminology that bypasses all the negative associations with rotting food and replaces these with more positive, desirable ideas instead. Fundamentally, this means changing the term "food waste" itself. Modifying this language would help to correct a commonly-held belief that food waste is half-eaten leftovers, which is inaccurate given that around 50 percent of all wasted food that is generated in the home is still edible.

Rescuing, Upcycling, and Repurposing Food

A variety of alternative nomenclature for "food waste" already exists—for example, terms that highlight the issue of overprovisioning in the home, like "surplus," "extra," or "excess" food, or that highlight food that is still safe to consume, like "uneaten," "unused," or "spare." Other options incorporate the solution within the name, such as "rescued" or "saved" food, and benefit from associations with the idea of helping, doing good, donating, and fixing the problem.

Already in common usage across the food industry is the term "upcycled," which refers to ingredients, products, or meals made from unused food that has been repurposed into new products or meals. Examples include snacks (i.e. banana chips, dried fruit), flour and other ingredients, drinks (i.e. beer from bread), and condiments (i.e. chutneys, relishes). Similarly, "repurposed," "legacy," or "regenerated" meals could also be used interchangeably as more innovative re-framings of a relatively unfashionable behavior.

Taking something fairly unexciting for most—like eating your leftovers—and "owning" the frame is another tactic we see when it comes to messaging on waste. For example, multiple brands now sell misshapen or imperfect produce proudly and actively calling out the fact that their products are "ugly," "wonky," or otherwise "odd" or "imperfect" in some way. Here, the aim is to get ahead of any negative associations that consumers may already have, with the goal of neutralising these (i.e. by making it obvious the product is imperfect).

Consumer Behavior Essential Reads

Avoiding Consumer Decision Fatigue

Are Designer-Crossbred Dogs Healthier Than Purebred Dogs?

All of these framings are likely to prove better at engaging consumers than the current term "food waste," but all require extensive testing to understand which is best to promote action. While improving the language we use won’t fix the problem of food waste on its own, finding a common and inspiring way to reframe the topic into something more hopeful would undoubtedly help us to make quicker progress on this important, but yucky problem.

A version of this article also appears on Green Queen Media.