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Food waste tectonics: Points of friction between policy push and practice pull in council-led household-food-waste interventions in Australia

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journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-24, 21:19 authored by Esther Landells, Anjum NaweedAnjum Naweed, Gamithri G Karunasena, David PearsonDavid Pearson, S Oakden
Household food waste is increasingly recognised as a global wicked problem for its greenhouse gas emissions, economic damage, and resource loss. Although targeted in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, countries can only respond according to their capacity. For Australia, national policy has put the pressure on states and territories to divert food waste away from landfill into a nascent circular economy. For councils, this increasingly means implementing a FOGO (Food Organics/Garden Organics) kerbside collection. Despite funding and infrastructure development, many are resisting. Framed by the tenets of policy diffusion, this paper presents the results of a nationwide exploratory survey aimed at identifying how and why council-based waste services staff resist, emulate or lead FOGO implementation. By assessing participants current kerbside systems and their attitudes towards household food waste management, the survey found costs, contamination, and capacity and were key concerns. However, responses to these varied considerably despite similarities of situation, often relating more to collaborative attitudes across waste services, council, and councillors. This paper recognises that a conducive environment for change is urgently needed for Australia to achieve organics diversion targets and shift household food towards a circular economy. It provides a starting point for further research into the complex and nuanced dynamics between council waste services and FOGO implementations, from external drivers and council paradigms to individual attitudes and perceptions.

Funding

Category 4 - CRC Research Income

History

Volume

357

Start Page

1

End Page

12

Number of Pages

12

eISSN

1095-8630

ISSN

0301-4797

Publisher

Elsevier

Additional Rights

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Language

en

Peer Reviewed

  • Yes

Open Access

  • Yes

Acceptance Date

2024-03-19

Author Research Institute

  • Appleton Institute

Era Eligible

  • Yes

Medium

Print-Electronic

Journal

Journal of Environmental Management

Article Number

120717

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