Grocery retailers' approaches to discussion on the food waste issue on social media

Abstract

Positioned at the interface between production and consumption, grocery retailers play a pivotal role in shaping the future of food waste. In addition to generating food waste in their everyday business operations, retailers' actions also have an indirect impact on other actors, especially consumers. Utilising the issue arena as a theoretical lens, this chapter scrutinises the public discussion on food waste and how it may steer understandings and changes connected to the issue. Holding considerable power within both the food system and society, grocery retailers' voices in the issue arena may have a significant impact. The purpose of the chapter is to examine how grocery retailers construct the food waste issue through discussing it on social media. Drawing on data gathered from social media, three discussion approaches to the issue are identified and discussed: reporting on reducing food waste, assisting households in reducing food waste, and initiating discussion for reducing food waste. The study also identifies themes that remain unmentioned by retailers despite being highly relevant from the food waste perspective. In order to have a stronger impact on the future of food waste, retailers are encouraged to adopt a more transformational role, both in their public communications and in their everyday actions.