AbstractsBusiness Management & Administration

Title: Food Waste in the UK Written by: David Magrane and Silje Biørnstad Background According to the ‘UK Love Food Hate Waste’ approximately 7 million tonnes of food and drinks from homes in the United Kingdom are wasted every year, whereas more than half of the food wasted is still perfectly fine to eat or drink. This is what made us write a project about food waste in the UK. We wanted to look into the perspective of consumer waste. This lead us to the following research question: How is food waste understood, practised and contested in the UK? We are using the following hypotheses as working questions throughout our project, in order to answer our research question: ● If the State is relied on to enact policies and laws that benefit the majority, then the majority should benefit. ● You would as a citizen in the UK want to prevent your individual food waste, since you (due to the media and interests organisations) are aware of the consequences and would want fit in and gain respect from your fellow citizens. ● If the goal of waste activists are to create a better world, through the reduction of food waste, and are a large enough group to influence the state in the creation of policies, then positive changes will occur. Methods and theory These hypotheses are making up our three empirical chapters, which contain analyses and theories. Our methods used in the project are the deductive theory method, the qualitative method, the quantitative method, content analysis and theoretical sampling. Our theories consists of the Rubbish Theory, the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the Informational Social Influence Theory and the Political Process Theory. We find that all of our methods and analyses are fundamental in our project, in order to get a clear result and conclusion. Conclusion Through our project we decided to look at the state in order to find out how food waste is understood in the UK. We looked at the individual consumers to understand how food waste is practised, and we went into the activism to understand how it is contested in the UK. The state is aware of the negative consequences of food waste and are making policies in order to prevent it. However, these laws are not benefitting everyone in the society, but the majority of the people do benefit and agree with the policies. The individual consumerism in the UK has reduced through the last years, but is still causing the most amount of food waste in the United Kingdom. Even though the consumer are in fact aware of the bad consequences, the media, state and interests organisations have not succeed in making the reducing of food waste a norm in the society, which means that the citizens do not change their behaviour in connection to food waste. Food waste in the UK is being contested by activists. In the UK the large number of food waste organisations fighting to reduce food waste has on many points succeeded in reducing food waste. They are working to make changes to current policies, but it is not possible unless the state’s current policies on food waste…