Creative: Food Waste

Exploring my domestic food-based waste through critical design learning encounters

We all produce and manage waste to varying degrees, across our living environments and daily life. Discarded edible food—food waste—is gaining significant attention globally as a contributor to climate change, through the production of methane gas in landfills. The United Nations (UN) estimates that, globally, humans waste about one third of all food produced, a resource that could be used to alleviate global hunger.

Imagine you are preparing a meal at home. Think of all of the materials that you might throw out. All of the food remnants, like vegetable peels, is food-based waste, but so is food packaging. Few government policies limit the types of materials companies can use to package their foods. Instead, most policies target consumers, through efforts such as banning or limiting the use of plastic bags. Packages remain important because they protect food in transportation and enable promotional messaging, corporate branding, and the communication of critical consumer information (e.g., nutrition values and ingredients). However, the environmental impact from plastic pollution is significant, polluting oceans and threatening species. Little (less than 10%) of our discarded plastics are ever recycled. How can we reduce our food-based waste?

For most of history, women’s knowledge of food and their labour in the kitchen determined what became domestic waste. Contemporary studies show that responding to food-based waste remains women’s work. Previous generations valued the reduction of household waste, as it was essential to the economics of North American households. A post-war cultural shift in the 1950s, however, redefined waste as a sign of privilege and modernity. The implication of this change in values and behaviour is the loss of food-related knowledge, devaluing this critical work. Today, there is little monetary incentive for households to engage in the labour needed to reduce food-based waste; instead, a renewed ethical value of care for the materials of food-based waste is called for.

Through the Eat, Waste, Make project, I explored my relationship to food and waste and extended my findings to teach others through public workshops. As a food studies scholar and a woman, I began researching my topic through my own practices. Designers are experts in materials, and critical design is an approach to design that focuses on making things that challenge the role of products in everyday life. Identifying my waste through the food I eat, and exploring the materials through critical design methods, provides a different kind of attention to what I discard, allowing me to develop a mindful relationship that extends taking care of the materials I encounter. The learning encounters I create (and depict in the GIFs below) form a method for developing care and enabling material visibility. Caring for materials means doing things differently, such as composting non-edible peels, repurposing glass, or limiting the use of plastics. Achieving a better practice with these materials requires enhancing my attention and acknowledging the individual waste materials that I encounter. Finally, through the learning encounters, I can identify the significance of labour and reflect on the unique care women held for generations to repurpose materials, re-use food waste, and ultimately prevent waste from entering the environment.