The Emergence of a Food-Waste-Based Commodity Frontier in the United States

ABSTRACT

The article documents the emergence of a food-waste-based commodity frontier in the United States that completes a process of food commodification from cradle to grave. Evidence is drawn from two contemporary trends: the introduction of a profit motive into surplus food rescue activities and the development of new municipal curbside composting programs. The language and theory of commodity frontiers are used to explore observed patterns and inform potential future evolution of each trend. The article contributes to the development of a theory of waste-based commodity frontiers in highly-formalized and well-capitalized contexts like the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• Food scraps
• food rescue
• curbside composting
• commodity frontiers
• municipal solid waste

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Lily Pollans and Caroline Howe for their help in initial conception of this paper and ongoing discussion; Evan Hepler-Smith and the participants in the Boston College Environmental Sociology Workshop for their comments on an early draft; and the editors for putting together this special issue, and for their patience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 For more on the development and implementation of the waste-based commodity frontiers concept, see Schindler and Demaria (2019); Corwin (2019); Samson (2019); and Tuçaltan (2019).

2 Appropriation and commodification are used throughout Moore (2015). Appropriation refers to “those extra-economic processes that identify, secure, and channel unpaid work outside the commodity system into the circuit of capital” (17), and commodification is the subsequent conversion of that which has been previously appropriated into standardized commodities that can be traded.