Drivers of divergent industry and consumer food waste behaviours: The case of reclosable and resealable packaging
By Ruby Chan, PhD Student on the AIP Save Food Packaging Project, Fight Food Waste CRC.
Highlights
Business viability considerations frame industry decisions for packaging features.
- Personal task goals and available tools/resources frame consumer packaging needs.
Industry perceives fulfilling consumer needs as diverging from key business priorities.
Packaging features unaligned with consumer needs can drive household food waste.
- Industry could better align packaging to household needs to reduce food waste.
Optimising packaging to align with consumers’ food management needs can improve packaging’s potential to reduce household food waste, important for a sustainable food system. This paper provides actionable insights to support the food/beverage–packaging industry, policymakers, and researchers to better understand the factors impeding industry implementation of packaging aligned to consumer needs and the potential flow-on effects on household food waste. To facilitate understanding, a consumer-industry grounded model is presented based in the Australian context, developed through qualitative research using the Gioia method to examine reclosable/resealable packaging, food storage, and household food waste.
The results indicate that divergent packaging priorities and needs in industry and consumers impede food waste reduction. Industry concerns for business viability mean prioritizing features to sell products, hence consumer needs are secondary. Consumer needs are framed by individual task goals for managing food storage and the availability of supporting resources, including appropriate packaging. Suggestions to help align consumer and industry priorities include increased industry–consumer communication to better help industry understand consumer needs and validating product-packaging with consumers.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652623015755?via%3Dihub#abs0015