Who’s responsible for food waste? Consumers, retailers and the food waste discourse coalition in the United Kingdom

Drawing on empirical research, including interviews with 38 key informants, this article examines how the challenge of food waste reduction has come to be framed, interpreted and responded to in the United Kingdom, focusing on household food waste and the interface between supermarkets and households. We identify a ‘discourse coalition’ arising from collective actors central to the issue that has achieved discursive hegemony over the framing of food waste as a problem. We analyse this discourse coalition – its core storylines, actors and practices – and the conditions that have enabled its emergence. Critical accounts of sustainable consumption commonly note the ‘responsibilisation of the consumer’: or the reduction of systemic issues to the individualised, behavioural choices of the ‘sovereign consumer’. We find, by contrast, that the ‘responsibilised consumer’ is by no means the discourse coalition’s dominant framing of the problem of household food waste. Instead, its dominant framing is that of distributed responsibility: responsibility distributed throughout the production–consumption system. The article also contributes towards understanding why retailers have embraced household food waste reduction as an object of intervention without framing the issue as one of, primarily, consumer responsibility

Plant Networks for Processing Recyclable Materials

10.1287/msom.2013.0437Manufacturing and Service Operations Management154670-688MSOM

Carbon dioxide reduction in the building life cycle: a critical review

The construction industry is known to be a major contributor to environmental pressures due to its high energy consumption and carbon dioxide generation. The growing amount of carbon dioxide emissions over buildings’ life cycles has prompted academics and professionals to initiate various studies relating to this problem. Researchers have been exploring carbon dioxide reduction methods for each phase of the building life cycle – from planning and design, materials production, materials distribution and construction process, maintenance and renovation, deconstruction and disposal, to the material reuse and recycle phase. This paper aims to present the state of the art in carbon dioxide reduction studies relating to the construction industry. Studies of carbon dioxide reduction throughout the building life cycle are reviewed and discussed, including those relating to green building design, innovative low carbon dioxide materials, green construction methods, energy efficiency schemes, life cycle energy analysis, construction waste management, reuse and recycling of materials and the cradle-to-cradle concept. The review provides building practitioners and researchers with a better understanding of carbon dioxide reduction potential and approaches worldwide. Opportunities for carbon dioxide reduction can thereby be maximised over the building life cycle by creating environmentally benign designs and using low carbon dioxide materials