THE LIMITS OF FOOD WASTE GOVERNANCE IN CITIES: CASE STUDY OF DAYTON, OHIO

abstract

Food waste has emerged as a key governance challenge in many cities, as the scale of waste has concerned stakeholders across the food system. While food waste is often analyzed at the consumption level, food is lost across all stages in the food system. In addition, a range of global, national, regional, and urban institutions influence how people consume and waste food at the local level. To understand the challenges associated with food waste governance, this paper examines Dayton, Ohio, as a case study. In particular, this research analyzes interview data of key stakeholders and survey data of city residents to understand the causes of food waste, food purchasing patterns, roles of different institutions in food waste governance, and perspectives on solutions to food waste. The results of this research suggest that broader shifts in thinking may be needed to build more effective and just urban food waste policies.

Keywords:

• Consumer
• food company
• food system
• food waste
• urban governance

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the range of government, business, and community stakeholders in the Dayton region for speaking with me. In addition, thanks are due to the staff at the Applied Policy Research Institute at Wright State University for their assistance in data collection and analysis. Lastly, I want to thank Wright State University for funding this research. All errors are the responsibility of the author.

Notes

1. Interviews were conducted during business hours and followed a list of questions, although the discussion was open ended. These interviews were recorded and transcribed with agreement from the interviewee. All interviews were cited in the same manner: (Interviewee role, institution, date). As multiple interviews were completed on the same day, many interviews have the same interview date. Interviews were edited for grammatical clarity when necessary.

2. This included three interviews with administrators at food grocers.

3. This included six interviews with county and city administrators at the Montgomery County Solid Waste District, city of Dayton Public Works, and Dayton – Montgomery County Public Health.

4. This included seven interviews with food vendors at Dayton markets, corner stores, and other smaller food vendors.

5. This included five informal discussions with consumers at Dayton markets.

6. This included eight interviews with food rescue and food justice organizations.

7. Questions for this food waste survey were developed from the primary investigator’s field experience on food waste issues and previous surveys (Ventour 2008; Gunders 2012; Stop FoodWaste 2015; Warshawsky 2019).

8. Analytical statistics were not used, because the data set was too small and non-normally distributed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Wright State University [NA].