Marketing for Sustainable Development

4Food Waste in Family Settings: What are the Challenges, Practices and Potential Solutions?

Amélie CLAUZEL¹, Nathalie GUICHARD² and Caroline RICHɲ

¹ Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, ISC Paris, France

² RITM, Paris-Saclay University, Sceaux, France

4.1. Introduction

Devoting a chapter to family food waste can be justified by two things: on the one hand, the enormous challenge that the fight against food waste presents and, on the other, the role of the end consumer in this fight within their own home .

Defined by the deterioration, removal or throwing away of still-edible food, waste can stem from either deliberate or non-deliberate actions (Leborgne et al. 2018). A truly global problem, it represents a a huge loss of food across the world (1.3 billion tons per year worldwide¹, 10 million tons of which are in France², or 29 kg per person in France³), a considerable economic cost, an ethical scandal (if we consider that a quarter of the waste would be enough to feed one eighth of the global under-nourished population), a squandering of resources and, indeed, is a significant contributor to global warming (in France, “the lifecycle of the average French person’s food represents around 20% of their total daily emissions”⁴ (Masson and Gojard 2019)).

Food waste is a major challenge at an economic, social, ethical and environmental level. If this waste is attributable to different causes and produced at all stages of the food production and consumption process, the family, ...