Disrupting household food consumption through experimental HomeLabs: Outcomes, connections, contexts

Abstract

This article explores the implications of conceptualising, designing and implementing experimental sites seeking to support more sustainable home-based eating practices, or HomeLabs for brevity. Building on earlier phases of practice-oriented participatory backcasting and transition framework construction, the HomeLabs involved collaboration with public, private and civil society sectors and with the members of participating households. These collaborations identified a suite of supportive socio-technological, informational and governance interventions that mimicked, as far as possible, the characteristics of promising practices for sustainable eating developed through backcasting and transition planning. The implemented interventions enabled householders to question, disassemble and reconfigure their eating practices onto more sustainable pathways across the integrated practices of food acquisition, storage, preparation and waste management. This process generated manifold insights into household eating practices, and this article focuses specifically on key outcomes of the HomeLabs, and the significance of social context, social relations and micropolitics of everyday life in shaping those outcomes. In particular, the HomeLabs findings reinforce calls to connect, combine and align product, regulatory, informational and motivational supports across the interdependent practices of eating (acquisition, storage and preparation and waste recovery) to optimise transitions towards sustainability. Offering a lens to interrogate interventions for sustainable food consumption in the home, this article provides a novel exercise in operationalising social practice theory.

Food Waste Reduction: A Test of Three Consumer Awareness Interventions

“…More recently, the issue of food waste has been linked to nutrition losses in diets [2,3], and these losses have important implications for the sustainability of diets and planetary health [4]. Efforts to prevent and reduce consumer food waste have included reducing cafeteria plate waste at an institutional level [5], changing guidelines around nutrition [6], food sharing apps [7], tailored home-based interventions [8], public commitments and goal setting [9], and information campaigns to increase food literacy. This last tool is the focus of our current study.…”

Mobile Apps for Green Food Practices and the Role for Consumers: A Case Study on Dining Out Practices with Chinese and Dutch Young Consumers

“…The consumption-end transition is inevitable for facilitating the food system in becoming more sustainable [4]. How to make the consumption-end transition accepted by consumers is a key research question that should be addressed by the food sector [1,5]. However, this is not an easy task.…”

Becoming FEW Conscious: A Conceptual Typology of Household Behavior Change Interventions Targeting the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus

“…Political and economic elements, such as "physical infrastructure, technical facilities, the availability of products, and product characteristics" may either directly affect behavior or contribute to attitudes and motivations [13] (p. 312). Recent trends in FEW intervention studies have increased attention to material and technological factors-for example, Devaney and Davies (2017) provided participants in a food sustainability study with tools, including food growing kits, organic food boxes, and fridge triage boxes, as part of a comprehensive intervention package that holistically addresses sustainable food consumption, storage, preparation, and waste [25].…”

“…Holistically addressing sustainable food consumption, storage, preparation, and waste, Devaney and Davies (2017) illustrated the success of combining a variety of intervention types in changing householder behaviors [25]. In efforts to support more sustainable eating practices in the home, the study provided participants with structural tools, including food growing kits, organic food boxes, and fridge triage boxes, both tailored and non-tailored informational tools like carbon footprint graphs and portion control guides, and action-based components, including a visit from a chef to inspire meal planning.…”