Making Food Manageable – Packaging as a Code of Practice for Work Practices at the Supermarket

Abstract

While packaging-free stores are in the uptake, single-use packaging remains a constitutive element in self-service supermarkets. Portraying packaging as an actor in workplace practices, the article provides novel explanations for the supermarkets’ struggle to reduce packaging. The ethnographic analysis shows that food packaging is crucial for the functioning of supermarkets. This is in contrast to engineering or marketing perspectives on packaging functions that often don’t take practical demands and habitual peculiarities of everyday work practices into consideration. Framed as a code of practice, packaging guides the daily management of food in three crucial ways. First, packaging is a multifunctional medium to present products to customers. Second, packaging is an indicator and transmitter to assess product quantities and qualities in the internal logistics of supermarkets. Third, packaging enables the management and reproduction of representative supermarket qualities like freshness and fullness. As a consequence, and in order to be successful, strategies for the reduction of packaging waste have to better acknowledge the diversity of roles packaging is playing within the framework of workplace practices. Planners of innovation processes need to consider the expertise of workers, the agency of packaging, the situational distribution of action, and the cultural framings of supermarkets.

Negotiating attachments to plastic

“…They are sticky, binding and hard to overcome, even when they are not satisfying for human actors (Le Velly et al, 2020). Hence, abolishing single-use plastics is not a question of willingness alone, but means dealing with existing material constraints and path dependencies (Sattlegger, 2021). Second, detachment from certain entities generally requires new attachments to other entities.…”

“…Actors involved in innovations must reflect their own positions and limitations in the course of navigating innovations. Hence, sustainable innovations cannot be simply planned and implemented top down, but require situational adaptations and trustful collaborations that must be habitualized in the corporate culture (Sattlegger, 2021; Süßbauer et al, 2019).…”

“…self-service supermarkets) and expanded supply chains (Sattlegger et al, 2020). Packaging determines the presentation and assessment of products and is a crucial factor in the organization and evaluation of work practices and supply chain logistics (Sattlegger, 2021). However, in recent years, the recognition of the ecological challenges of plastic pollution and marine litter has problematized plastic packaging and other single-use plastics (Kramm and Völker, 2018).…”

“…Since the 1950s, plastic packaging has become part of the organization of food supply in Western countries, and today plays a decisive role in how we produce, transport, store, buy and sell food (Cochoy, 2007; Hawkins, 2018; Phillips, 2016; Sattlegger, 2021). Through practices like layering, bundling, storing and displaying, plastic packaging has enabled new types of products (e.g.…”

Schwierigkeiten und Potentiale der Verpackungsvermeidung – eine Arbeitsethnographie im Lebensmittelhandel

“…Packaging has proven to be a crucial device in the reproduction of spatial, temporal and social connections in differentiated networks of supply practices . It fosters the transportation, preservation and exchange of products, information and meaning Sattlegger, 2021a). Accordingly, it is crucial to better understanding the role of packaging as an entity that makes a difference in the organization and performance of the food supply.…”