Normalising alternative practices: the recovery, distribution and consumption of food waste

ABSTRACT

Certain practices are excluded from markets, even though they may contribute to more sustainable systems. Other practices are integral to markets despite their highly detrimental impacts. This study investigates how alternative practices in the food sector became integrated into the market through normalisation processes. Using a qualitative approach, it examines the processes by which practices, including the recovery, distribution and consumption of food waste, went from being excluded from a mainstream food market to becoming normalised within it. Normalisation occurs as a result of retracing the biography of an object, building community, rituals and sacrifices. The author discusses theoretical and managerial implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Alternative practices
• normalisation
• food waste
• qualitative research
• sustainability

Introduction

Toxic boat paint has a detrimental effect on marine ecosystems, and yet it is a well-accepted practice (The Guardian, 2006). Plastic bags for grocery shopping are distributed freely to consumers, despite a gigantic garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean (Milman, 2016) and other destructive consequences. Megatons of food are thrown away and destroyed despite their inherent nutritional value (Gollnhofer, Hellwig, & Morhart, 2016). As these examples illustrate, some objects or practices are excluded from the marketplace, whereas others are part of it despite their detrimental impact. In other words, some objects or practices are accepted as normal/not-normal – fostering/hindering their adaptation and interaction (Rettie, Burchell, & Riley, 2012). The perception of those objects/practices is not based on their material properties, but is socio-historically constructed: That means, food is discarded despite its nutritional value and boat paint is used despite its toxic nature because it is perceived as normal.

This article is interested in how alternative practices can be included into the marketplace through normalising processes. The author defines alternative market practices as actions, objects and meanings (Shove, 2003) that were formerly excluded from the marketplace but that now open up new ways of consumption, production and/or exchange in comparison to more traditional settings. By traditional settings, this article refers to the prevailing practices that shape the marketplace into ‘homogenous, standardized offerings and instrumental modes of exchange’ (Smith Maguire, Watson, & Lang, 2015). Alternative market practices by this definition do not include innovations or product introductions in the classical marketing sense. This article is interested in practices that strive for inclusion in the marketplace, but that are not based on the goal of profit-maximisation.

Normalisation – i.e. a process that enhances gradually the perception of activities, behaviour and objects as normal (Rettie et al., 2012) – is not a straightforward task. For example, prior research has pointed to the questionable impact of marketing activities aimed at promoting ethical alternatives (Peattie & Peattie, 2009). Orally or visually positioning an object or a practice as normal is apparently not enough (Rettie et al., 2012). Besides its strong normative component, normalisation has a strong material component (Holt, 2012), such as cases where infrastructure fosters a certain kind of behaviour and renders it normal. Both material and non-material culture are implicated.

Aligned with the Call for Papers for this special issue, and with prior research in the Journal of Marketing Management (Smith Maguire et al., 2015), the author considers it of utmost importance to investigate how alternative practices can be normalised through marketing and related activities (Rettie, Burchell, & Barnham, 2014; Rettie et al., 2012) for the sake of sustainability and in face of the ever-present ecological degradation. This article investigates the alternative practice of recovering, distributing and consuming food that has been declared waste by retail stores and consumers. More specifically, the author focuses on how this alternative practice became normalised within a traditional retailing environment. Distributing and consuming food waste are practices usually excluded from the marketplace. They are perceived as not normal or even as social taboos (Hill & Stamey, 1990) and, as such, they offer a rich context for investigating the normalisation of alternative practices. The context of food seems especially appropriate in that food is close to our selves (Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991) and the understanding of what is perceived as normal in food markets is highly socioculturally constructed. For instance, consider the rules of different religions that declare certain types of food as pure and others as impure (Douglas, 2013).

The article is structured as follows. The literature review outlines the alternative nature of certain practices and behaviours and highlights the role of normalisation processes. For analytical convenience, the author conceptualises normal and not normal as two distinct categories. This article maps the inclusion of an alternative object and related practices into the marketplace as a category shift. For this purpose, the article turns to interpretive work in consumer behaviour that deals with category change and meaning transfer of object. In the findings, the author highlights four normalisation strategies that are underpinned by the process of strengthening the ties to consumer society and a positive meaning transfer process. Last, the author discusses the implications of the practice-based normalisation process for theory and for marketing practitioners.

Literature review

Alternative practices as not normal

Recent research has considered various kinds of alternative practices. Products are exchanged according to non-monetary logics (Albinsson & Perera, 2012), marketplace actors behave and interact in new ways (Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007), or objects that were rejected from the marketplace, such as bulky discarded items, got re-included (Guillard & Roux, 2014). In pseudo-sharing models (Belk, 2014; Lamberton & Rose, 2012), formerly unused resources and capacities are used for profit-maximisation. For the empirical and theoretical endeavour of this article, the author narrows the definition of alternative practices. For the remainder of the article, alternative practices are defined as those that were formerly excluded from the normal consumption sphere, but now open up new ways of consumption, production and/or exchange in comparison to more traditional settings.

As this article is interested in conceptualising normalisation strategies, the author is intrigued by objects and their related consumption practices that almost run counter to traditional settings, for instance, the exchange of consumption goods that were formerly not exchanged or actively rejected from the consumption sphere. At Bookcrossing (Corciolani & Dalli, 2014) books are shared for free; on couchsurfing (Hellwig, Morhart, Kocher, & Zisiadis, 2014) a place to stay is offered for free; or in really really free markets consumption goods are distributed for free (Albinsson & Perera, 2012). The goal of these alternatives often does not lie in profit-maximisation, but it is about promoting a certain ideology – of a green or ethical nature – by including practices that formerly were not viewed as legitimate in the market sphere. Alternative practices are often perceived as not normal or unorthodox because they are not aligned with patterns, exchange modes or overall interactions that the consumer knows from more traditional settings. An understanding of normalisation processes that add to mainstreaming these alternatives is much needed (Smith Maguire et al., 2015).

Alternative practices in the food and drink sector

Alternative practices in the food and drink sector should face especially strong barriers to normalisation because consumers hold such strong conceptions about food consumption. Those are socio-historically constructed and manifest themselves in regulations (Waterfield, 2014), in holiday rituals (Wallendorf & Arnould, 1991) and in what kinds of food we eat versus those we shun (Douglas, 2013). In westernised countries, food sectors are highly regulated in regard to what kind of food is offered, how it is offered, how it is consumed and exchanged, and how it is eventually disposed off. Best-before dates and aesthetic standards play strong roles in the decisions of retailers to include or exclude any given food items in their assortments for sale. Interactions between consumers and foods are structured and follow the specific logic of the supply chain. Against this background, the disposal of food items independently of their nutritional value is considered a normal practice, whereas interacting with discarded food items is seen as not normal and is relegated to the realm of the homeless (Hill & Stamey, 1990).

Recently, several alternative practices in this realm of food markets have emerged that challenge underlying assumptions and implied relationships. For instance, in the case of community-supported agriculture or farmer markets, consumers cooperate directly with farmers, leaving out the retailer as a middleman (McEachern, Warnaby, Carrigan, & Szmigin, 2010; Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007). Similarly, consumers change established market relationships by selling prepared foods to other consumers on so-called Restaurant Days (Hietanen, Mattila, Schouten, Sihvonen, & Toyoki, 2016). Slow-Food movements (Chaudhury & Albinsson, 2015; Sebastiani, Montagnini, & Dalli, 2013; Tencati & Zsolnai, 2012) and fair trade certificates (Gendron, Bisaillon, & Rance, 2009; Jaffee, 2010) introduce new ideologies concerning how food should be produced and consumed. More radical approaches such as dumpster diving redefine what kind of food should be consumed and also how it is acquired (Barnard, 2011; Eikenberry & Smith, 2005; Fernandez, Brittain, & Bennett, 2011; Gollnhofer, 2017). Those examples challenge traditional assumptions about what food is, how it should be distributed and according to what underlying exchange logics. Alternative practices promote products and related practices that are not perceived as normal in that they run counter to traditionally accepted ways of doing (Rettie et al., 2012). Often, alternative practices remain at the margins of society (Guillard & Roux, 2014); however, for ecological reasons and for the sake of a more transparent and equal society, it would be crucial to understand how alternative practices can be normalised within existing market spheres.

In order to shed light on normalisation processes, this article investigates an extreme case of abnormality, following the logic that extreme cases can reveal patterns that would otherwise be less visible (Schouten, 1991). In the case the author studies how a distinctively abnormal practice – the recovery, distribution and consumption of food waste – becomes normalised through the efforts of a community of activist consumers that eventually evolves into a nation-wide organisation.

Normalisation processes

This article conceptualises normal in a categorical way, that is, normal versus not normal (Rettie et al., 2012). Prior research has found that consumers are more likely to adopt practices that they perceive as normal. This holds particularly true for new products and practices that are initially judged to be outside of normal behaviour (Rettie et al., 2014). As such, normalisation is crucial when the goal is including new products and related practices into the market sphere.

Normalisation processes imply a category shift from not normal to normal. Parker, Aldridge, and Measham (1998) understand the term of normalisation as describing a way in which deviant practices gain adaptation across society. Other researchers use the term normalisation in order to describe the social inclusion of excluded groups (e.g. disabled persons) (Wolfensberger, 1972). In science and technology studies, normalisation is used to describe the emergence, adaptation and implementation of new technologies (May & Finch, 2009). The author aligns this definition of normalisation closely with prior research in the realm of consumer behaviour (Rettie et al., 2014, 2012) and refers normalisation to a ‘social process where products and practices outside the range of normality, gradually become accepted as standard and normal’ (Rettie et al., 2012, p. 421).

Marketing communication strategies such as advertising or media campaigns are suggested as possible avenues to normalisation (Rettie et al., 2014). They are, however, criticised for their limited impact, and research has called for investigating other paths to normalcy for abnormal products and practices (Hartmann & Ibanez, 2006; Peattie & Peattie, 2009). For this purpose, the article turns to interpretive work in consumer behaviour that is concerned with how objects shift categories. Several empirical studies are concerned with category shift (e.g. Epp & Price, 2010), and one seminal paper outlines explicitly how objects switch categories: Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry (1989) identify different practices and status that allow for a category shift of an object. They identify rituals, pilgrimage, quintessence, gift-giving, collection, inheritance or external sanctions as capable of shifting an object from one category (the profane) to its opposite (the sacred). Their article offers a great point of departure for qualitative data analysis (i.e. coding), and yet  it gives only limited indications on how a category change from not normal to normal occurs. Contributing to that understanding is the purpose of this article.

Context

Alternative practices in the food and drink market are diverse and widespread. Slow Food movements (Sebastiani et al., 2013; Tencati & Zsolnai, 2012), community-supported agriculture (Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007) or fairtrade certificates (Geiger-Oneto & Arnould, 2011; Jaffee, 2010) have been the interest of academic studies. As the author’s interest is in how consumers start interacting with objects that get usually excluded from the marketplace – or in other words how rejected objects get re-integrated into the market sphere through normalising processes – she studies a market phenomenon in the food sector that challenges traditional ways of exchange and consumption, namely Foodsharing. This article investigates the practices of Foodsharing participants and leaders and how exchanging and eating discarded food items were positioned as normal. Foodsharing efforts in Germany have resulted in a nation-wide organisation with several thousands of participants.

Foodsharing challenges the orthodox thinking that food items should be discarded because of the best-before date or for aesthetic reasons. Instead, Foodsharing promotes the idea that those objects should be re-integrated into the market sphere. Foodsharing is a consumer-driven initiative, founded in Germany in 2012 by food activists. Initially, envisioned as a platform for food swapping among individuals, it also facilitates the redistribution of food surpluses from retailers to consumers. In Foodsharing, food waste is recovered at the point of rejection by retail stores or consumers, before it goes into the waste stream, and is distributed among consumers.

Marketplace actors such as retailers and consumers dispose of food items for different reasons, for instance, for the approach of a best-before date or for aesthetic reasons (Noleppa & Cartsburg, 2015). Prior to the Foodsharing arrangement, large amounts of still edible food ended up in the landfill, in incinerators or were used for  anaerobic digestion – a series of biological processes – in order to produce fuel (Zhang et al., 2007). Foodsharing offers a platform, whereby those food items can be distributed among consumers and from retailers to consumers. In contrast to food banks (Riches, 2002, 2011), Foodsharing does not see itself as a charity, and need is not a prerequisite for receiving the food. Also reciprocity is not expected. The major goal of the Foodsharing platform is simply to save food from destruction while it is still edible.

So far Foodsharing in Germany has managed to save over 4 million kg of safe food waste, with the help of almost 16,000 active members and the cooperation of 2557 retailers (as of 2016/04/16, Foodsharing, 2016). As such, Foodsharing has managed to grow from an organisation encompassing around 30 individuals to a Germany-wide initiative. This shift from odd niche to respected organisation makes Foodsharing an appropriate context for investigating normalisation processes.

A quote about marketing communication strategy gives us the first hint in which direction to look. As put by Ronald Focken, Managing director of a large marketing agency:

Foodsharing managed with almost no financial resources to develop a successful communication strategy. The Foodsharing team draws on social platforms such as Facebook and other social media in order to promote their idea and uses perfectly the chances and opportunities of the new digital space in order to promote a very important project. (http://www.wiwo.de/technologie/green/living/weniger-essen-im-muell-foodsharing-gewinnt-renommierten-umweltpreis/13546754.html)

However, the author argues that just analysing the official communication strategy of Foodsharing would neglect important other aspects – such as practices – that add to the normalisation of distributing and consuming discarded food.

Method and data analysis

The author collected ethnographic data from January 2013 (shortly after the official launch of the online platform of Foodsharing.de) through August 2015. The author’s deep immersion in the Foodsharing community as an active member enabled data collection from diverse sources. Participant observation included food recovery visits to retail stores, assisting with food distribution, consuming the food items with the informants, picking-up food at other consumers’ homes, and yielded 60 pages of field notes and written vignettes.

Thirteen unstructured in-depth interviews, averaging 47 min, generated narratives from active Foodsharing members, including organisational founders and volunteers with various other roles in the organisation. Interviews focused on the motivations of interviewees to participate in Foodsharing, the practices involved and their personal experiences. Pseudonyms were used for all of the informants.

Because Foodsharing is also an online platform (foodsharing.de), online data were abundant and useful. The author retrieved 39 pages of relevant blog entries and forum discussions for analysis and triangulation. The evolution and development of Foodsharing was also picked up and reported in various media, including traditional news outlets, and the data set included 43 related newspaper articles (see Table 1).

Table 1. Collected data.

Type of data	Details
In-depth interviews with foodsharing members	13 in-depth interviews (average length: 47 min); interview guideline: motivation of members, their involvement, practices and experiences
Observation & Participation	60 pages of fieldnotes and of written vignettes (different observation sites)
Online data	39 pages of relevant blog entries – retrieved online from foodsharing websites
Newspaper	43 newspaper articles (German and international newspapers)
Photos	78 photos for triangulation purposes

In terms of qualitative data analysis, the author relied on stringent coding processes in order to answer the outlined research questions (Saldana, 2015). As a first step, the author coded for the themes of category shift as proposed by Belk et al. (1989) – for instance, for rituals and sacrifice. Those notions established the a-priori defined themes of this article. As a second step, the author went back and conducted open coding (Glaser & Strauss, 2009) in order to not overlook any meaningful emerging themes in the data set. This step allowed the author to identify the important theme of community building that is omnipresent in the data. As a subsequent step, the author grouped the identified themes according to similarity in an iterative way until connections and interdependencies between the themes were established (Spiggle, 1994).

The rich data set – including observation, participation and media articles – allows for triangulation of the data (Denzin, 1970). This means the author compared the themes identified in the interviews with other data sources such as observation and media articles. This procedure allows for further confidence in the findings. Triangulation is also reflected in the presentation of the findings, where the author often juxtaposes fieldnotes with actual interview data and media coverage in order to show the robustness of the themes.

Findings

In the findings, the author shows how alternative practices in the food sector can be included in the consumption sphere through normalisation processes. Four practices enhance normalisation: retracing the biography of the object, building a strong community, making sacrifices and developing rituals. Underlying these practices are two key mechanisms: (1) strengthening ties with consumer society and (2) positive meaning transfer. The result is that practices get included into the market sphere. The themes are interdependent; however, they are presented as distinct themes for the sake of clarity and interpretation. Figure 1 illustrates the findings.

Figure 1. Normalising process for the inclusion of rejected objects and related practices.

In a first step, the article highlights how food items, although still safe to eat and having nutritional value, get excluded from the marketplace. Then the author analyses the mission of Foodsharing participants, i.e. how they want to include rejected food items into the consumption sphere. In subsequent steps, the author discusses and illustrates four normalisation strategies. The article identifies two underlying mechanisms for normalisation processes: ties strengthening and meaning transfer.

Excluded food items and the vision of foodsharing

In order to understand how formerly excluded practices get included into the market sphere through normalisation processes, the author first analyses how the consumption of certain food items got excluded in the first place. One third of all annually produced food gets wasted and lost on its way from the farm to plate (FAO, 2011). In many less-developed countries, food shortages are a daily concern. Meanwhile, western industrialised countries prosper with an abundance of food (Evans, Campbell, & Murcott, 2012). Food affluence leads to the discarding of large amounts of safe food, that is, food that is still consumable. In order to satisfy consumers’ expectations regarding aesthetics, freshness and availability, the food system in the affluent west engages in overproduction. Much of what is produced is never consumed. In order to maintain food affluence, food items are treated as commodities that can be easily discarded once they no longer meet the expectations and requirements of consumers and/or retailers. No longer having exchange value within the parameters of the existing system, food is declared to be waste and is relegated to the trash and, ultimately, to landfills or incinerators. Generally speaking, wasting resources seems to be an accepted practice within consumer societies (Baudrillard, 1998). For instance, planned obsolescence – limiting artificially the life span of a product – is one practice by which companies attempt to increase sales and profits by engineering trajectories of waste (Guiltinan, 2009). Similarly, the fashion industry triggers wasteful behaviour by offering new collections every couple of weeks in order to generate higher profits (Ertekin & Atik, 2014). Overall, waste and unsustainable behaviour are accepted for the sake of economic growth and for compliance with consumers’ expectations (Hardin, 1998; O’Brien, 1999). Often resources are wasted, although they are still perfectly consumable. Wasting resources is accepted as normal and is practiced by diverse stakeholders.

This is where Foodsharing and its idea of including discarded food items back into the market sphere intervenes. As it reads on the Foodsharing website,

All of us share the responsibility for millions of tons of food thrown away by retailers, intermediaries, producers and caterers. (…) Only together can we stop the madness of consumer society through the participation of everyone and their respective responsible actions. (http://wiki.lebensmittelretten.de/Kontext_und_Selbstverständnis)

Foodsharing, with the aim of reducing food waste, sees wasting as a systemic problem, as a ‘madness’ of consumerism and unconscious and exploitative consumption (Baudrillard, 1998). By not blaming any single class of actor, Foodsharing envisions change mainly through the interplay of different actors in the marketplace. According to Foodsharing, the problem lies in the fact that food items get excluded from the marketplace although they still possess inherent value – and this value needs to be respected. As it continues on the Foodsharing website,

We – Foodsharing – give away surplus food from retailers and consumers. You can’t measure its value in monetary terms; we prize it for its intrinsic value and ideal use. … Two-thirds of the food waste can be avoided through the engagement of retailers, foodsharers and other individuals.

(http://wiki.lebensmittelretten.de/Kontext_und_Selbstverständnis)

Foodsharing here underscores how important it is to include those food items in the consumption sphere as it would result in a significant reduction of food waste. Further, Foodsharing stresses that food items are excluded from the consumption sphere for the wrong reasons – i.e. the loss of exchange value – although they still have ethical and inherent nutritional value. As it continues in the official mission of Foodsharing,

In industrialized countries, 40% of total food waste is safe foods. Foodsharing, together with thousands of volunteers wants to live a new culture of respect vis-à-vis the food item. Together with cooperating retailers we want to grant the respect to food items that they merit. … The core idea is to share excess food with other humans. There is no monetary exchange. Sharing is an ethical act. We grant food the honor it deserves.

(http://wiki.lebensmittelretten.de/Kontext_und_Selbstverständnis)

According to the official declaration of Foodsharing, surplus food items should be honoured and appreciated. Obviously, honour and respect, like value, are socially constructed meanings, but Foodsharing bases its understanding of what should be included into the market sphere on the inherent properties of the food rather than on its exchange value.

Normalising the sharing and consumption of surplus food, which has been targeted for disposal, is not an easy or straightforward task. Consumers themselves may feel ambivalent about it, regardless of their supportive personal ideologies. Manuela says,

Sometimes I am really proud. I think, yes, I use something that otherwise would end up at the landfill. And sometimes there is this shame. I think, well, yes, but I’m getting something that no one else wants. (Interview)

Manuela oscillates between feelings of pride and shame. Consuming discarded and, by inference, substandard food items results in reflexivity regarding her behaviours as juxtaposed against what is perceived as normal in Western society.

Paradoxically, it seems to be more normal to discard food items despite their inherent value than to re-appreciate them. As Sebastian says,

Yes, it is strange. We grow up and we are used to having milk all of the time, cereals as well, hmm, everything. And if we want to have some fresh bread for breakfast, we buy fresh bread and throw out the older loaf. Or the cereals, we just discard them when we do not like them any longer. (Interview)

Our childhood and the normative system around us shape our perceptions of normal and not normal behaviours, resulting sometimes in paradoxical outcomes. Despite their inherent value, we discard food items and exclude them from the system. However, engaging with discarded food triggers reflexivity and questioning based on the unorthodox way of consuming. Sebastian continues,

The first time it felt really strange. I asked myself the questions: Is this food still good? Should I eat it? Can I offer it to my friends? All those questions turning around in my head. What to do with it? But it looked totally normal. It was just lying there in front of me. (Interview)

Here, Sebastian illustrates his confusion and disturbances when he first received recovered food waste. Because consuming such food is not normal, he had no clear patterns or practices to fall back on, and he struggled initially to understand and take correct action with respect to the food.

Integrating food items that have been rejected back into the normal sphere of market and consumption behaviours is a challenging endeavour as it clashes with the conception of what is perceived in our society as normal and not normal. In the next sections, the author discusses four normalisation strategies identifiable from the collected data and identifies the underlying mechanisms behind those strategies, namely strengthening ties with consumer society and positive meaning transfer.

Retracing the biography

Given that value is a human construct, a matter of attributed meaning, it may seem ontologically absurd to discuss the inherent value of a food item. Inherent value is an emic interpretation, and it is not as ridiculous as it might seem on the surface. Food does have inherent properties, such as calories, vitamins and flavour, and those properties are the result of particular biographical processes. What is more absurd is the notion that food should be excluded from the consumption sphere because it cannot be sold within the parameters of a particular retail food system. And yet, safe food items routinely get discarded and thus excluded from the consumption sphere once they lose their exchange value.

By retracing the biography of the food item (Kopytoff, 1986), Foodsharing emphasises values and resources that are inherent to the object as they have been incorporated throughout the production process. Retracing the biography refers to emphasising the emerging nature of the food item, i.e. to render visible the accumulation of resources within the production process. The goal is to normalise the inclusion of the discarded food item into the market sphere.

Nathalie, a Foodsharing member, says,

I save the food before it gets to the dumpster. The cow responsible for the yoghurt was not standing in the dairy farm producing milk in vain, because I still eat the yoghurt after the best-before date. And the energy of workers and the electricity for the production have not been wasted. The whole industry!, it costs a lot of money to produce something like yoghurt, and yoghurt should not be thrown away in the end. (Interview)

Nathalie makes the history of food items more transparent. Value does not exist apart from our cultural and economic sphere. It is created through a combination of material resources, work and energy. Discarding safe food items implies ignoring or depreciating any other value that has been built into the object. This informant contests the categorisation of discarded food as waste and its exclusion from the marketplace.

Lucia also emphasises the biography of the objects when other people come to her home to pick up food items that she does not want any longer:

When I give them the food, I always tell them the story behind it. Where we got it from and why we don’t want it any longer … I think this is about really appreciating the food item. For instance, once we had some premium chocolate. My husband is a successful musician travelling the world. He often gets a lot of stuff that we don’t like. We don’t eat any sugar. But just because we don’t like it doesn’t mean that it has no value or is bad. I tell the story about we got it from. And then I think it feels special to the person who picks it up. The chocolate bar just got a whole story and a history, and yes it travelled the world! (Interview)

Lucia emphasises the life-story of the food item by communicating its trajectory. She believes that recounting the genealogy of the food item emphasises its real value, even if she personally declines to consume it.

Tracing back the biography helps to appreciate food items for their inherent value, to understand their value differently and to develop a different definition of waste. Luisa, another Foodsharing member, says, ‘It has been simply thrown away. It has been declared waste. For me it is only waste, really only waste, when I cannot use it any longer.’ Luisa questions the institutional definition of waste and promotes her own definition, where food items should be included in the market sphere as long as they have nutritional value. She shows respect and esteem towards food items and appreciates them for their inherent value and not for their socially constructed exchange value.

Appreciating the food’s genealogy elevates it to a level closer to the sacred than the profane (Belk et al., 1989). Thousands of Foodsharing participants and more than 2500 cooperating retailers engage in the appraisal and saving of surplus food items and, in this way, prolong their lives in marketplace. Food items effectively are given a second life rather than the death sentence imposed an overly consumerist system in a manner that is similar to keeping an inherited object as a treasure at home or selling it for high prices in the official marketplace for its history (Belk et al., 1989). Foodsharing emphasises the inherent value of the food item and portrays it as a respectable object that no longer belongs to the category of waste, but should be appreciated and consumed as food. Because eating good food is normal and eating waste or bad food is not, Foodsharing’s food genealogy functions as an effective normalisation strategy.

Building community

Building community is a reoccurring theme throughout the empirical data. The nodal point of the Foodsharing community is the place in which the disposal of edible food is imminent. Almost all meetings and activities are centred on the food itself. For instance, the goal of Foodsharing is not to help people in need (see www.wiki.foodsharing.de). Rather, it is to save and reintegrate discarded food items into the consumption sphere. This prioritisation of the food is emphasised by their official slogan: ‘Food is for sharing, not throwing away’.

The emphasis on the food can be evidenced throughout the Foodsharing organisation from local chapters up to the national level. On the local level, foodsharers (a role for volunteers in the organisation) meet on a regular basis for so-called ‘snipping parties’. At those parties, foodsharers come together in order to cook and eat the food that was saved. As Emma says,

It is really crazy. We all go there and it is just all about the food – and yes it is also nice to meet other people. But we prepare the food together, we cook together, then we eat together. (…) What are we talking about? Ah, a lot about the food that we usually save. Also what we do with it. Often it is so much that we have to distribute it. And I got two super nice recipes last time. I had no idea about all kinds of cool stuff you can do with Jerusalem artichokes. (Interview)

At those parties everything revolves around the food, but the social effect is one of community building. Foodsharing also organises larger gatherings. About three times a year in community centres, using mobile kitchens, the organisation holds events to celebrate its food recovery activities. Hundreds of Foodsharing members gather together to cook and eat. They use only recovered food items that they have collected prior to the event at grocery stores across the city. Once again, the food is the star of the show, but participants engage socially with each other around the cooking and eating. The food is the catalyst for the community.

This community building process is spearheaded by one of the founders of Foodsharing. Victor, a former dumpster diver,¹ was one of the first to approach grocery stores for cooperation. By pointing out the large amounts of safe food that get wasted, he convinced them to cooperate with the recently founded organisation of Foodsharing. As the public face of Foodsharing and its main representative in the media, Victor is featured in dozens of newspaper articles and films against food waste. With his wife and his little daughter he lives a sustainable and conscious lifestyle and acts as a charismatic role model for Foodsharing members. His leading role and his charisma result in a large fellowship of people admiring his lifestyle, illustrated by the following fieldnotes covering the yearly organised 3^rd international Foodsharing meeting in Berlin (May 2015), where over 300 members of Foodsharing gathered:

Victor was all the time surrounded by people. The whole day he engaged in conversations. Several times someone pointed at him and explained to me that this is one of the founding fathers of Foodsharing, that he lives without money and has transferred the Foodsharing thought to other areas of life. Also several times I was pulled into conversations about how to adapt Victor’s lifestyle for my own life. At the end of the two days, Victor gave a speech and answered questions while standing in the middle of a circus tent. The foodsharers listened to him carefully. (Fieldnotes of the author, May 2015)

Victor lives a lifestyle that is almost diametrically opposed to modern consumerism and its assumption that ever-higher quantities of consumption bring about happiness and fulfilment. His way of living grants him authenticity and the esteem of large parts of the Foodsharing community, and it taps into the cultural value of sustainability (Holt, 2004), a megatrend of the 21th century (Guillard & Roux, 2014; Varey, 2013). Victor acts like a charismatic leader – one of the core logics of ethical economies (Arvidsson, 2008) – and as such is able to transform the symbolic value of discarded food items by showing, for instance, how they are perfectly suitable for his family’s consumption.

The association of food waste recovery with a strong community and its charismatic leader serves to normalise the practice of rescuing, distributing and consuming food that had been slated for destruction, and bringing it back into the consumption sphere. Engaging with the food surplus is understood as far more normal when consumers see other people like them doing it, and when it is positioned within a community.

Rituals

Rituals have the power to transform the symbolic nature of an object (Belk et al., 1989; McCracken, 1986). For instance, when a sanctifying ritual is performed, the focal object is said to be blessed with sacredness. Rituals are able to attach symbolic meaning, either positive or negative, to objects or to spark a category change, such as from sacred to profane and vice versa.

In the case of Foodsharing, retailers hand over unmarketable food, such as produce that has become overripe or packaged foods past their freshness dates, to members of the Foodsharing organisation for distribution to interested parties. When foodsharers pick up food at cooperating retailers, they often do not take their shares and go straight home. Instead, they join other foodsharers and ritualistically prepare the food to be distributed. Emily describes the ritual by which foodsharers confer respect on the food and give it new meaning: ‘You collect all the food. And then in the end you meet at an indicated place. All the saved food is carefully arranged. Then you contemplate it devoutly.’

The gathering places are called fairteiler, which is German for ‘fair-sharing.’ These are public places where the collected food is distributed to everyone who is interested in it. The sacred or special character attributed to the recovered food items becomes evident in fieldnotes reporting on food distribution at a fairteiler:

Entering the fairteiler, the food was arranged on a table. A crowd of twenty people stood around the table. An older, overweight man standing in the middle raised his voice. He reminded me of a preacher. Everyone else went silent. The man emphasized that everyone should be especially grateful for this food. We have to value food and take it as something special and not as something given. (Fieldnotes of the author, March 2013)

The informants do not judge the items as old or contaminated food that they have received for free from cooperating retailers. Instead, they revere the food for its inherent value, that is, the nutritional value that is one of the bases of human life. Conveying honour and respect through ritualistic behaviour, members of Foodsharing incite a positive spill-over effect towards the food items and therefore normalise their consumption. As illustrated in this observation, the collected food was honoured. In a speech similar to a prayer, its special nature was emphasised. In this context, the arrangement of the discarded food, as if on an altar, and the gathering of individuals evoked strong associations to a religious ritual.

Individuals taking and picking-up the discarded food also reported ritualistic behaviour at home. Renata says,

For me it is like a ‘jour-fixe’ (sic). I go there every Friday to pick up the food. I take all of it home. There it begins. The food I cannot use up, I chop it into small pieces and I freeze it. Snipping the food, it is like a meditation for me and it calms me down from the weeks activity. After snipping the food I wash it once again and then I package it and put it into the fridge or freezer. Or I ring at my neighbors and ask them whether they need some food. Or I invite friends over for dinner. (Interview)

Renata engages in some cleaning rituals that seem to de-stigmatise the object and to introduce it back into the consumption sphere. Only after cleaning and even deconstructing the food into small pieces does Renata distribute the food to neighbours or invite friends over for dinner.

Aligned with the theoretical background of this study that suggests that ritual can incite category shifts of objects, the author interprets rituals as normalising strategies that have the power to shift the object from the not normal to the normal category. It may even be said that the rituals elevate the food from not good to especially good.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice and commitment are often associated with special or sacred objects (Belk et al., 1989). In a religious context, sacrifices are used to worship, for instance, a god. In this case, members of Foodsharing sacrifice time in order to save the food item. This quote from Samantha illustrates her extreme commitment and abandonment:

They called me yesterday. At six in the morning. They told me they had a lot of food for us that they did not want to throw away. So I got up and phoned some people in order to help me to pick the food up. And this on the Saturday before Christmas. (Interview)

For Samantha saving discarded food is so important that she is willing to interrupt her Christmas holidays, her sleep and her weekend. She shows a high degree of commitment that can be only explained by the importance of the goals of Foodsharing to her.

For the sake of saving and using resources, Foodsharing members are often willing to overrule their own consumption preferences or expand their consumption repertoires. Emily says,

Often I take products that I wouldn’t buy in the grocery store. Especially when it comes to yoghurt. Usually I only buy natural (unflavored) yoghurt and not one mixed with fruits or something like that, because of the glucose and the fructose. But once it is in my fridge, I am fine with it. (…) It doesn’t get wasted. (Interview)

Emily is inclined to compromise on her conception of healthy nutrition in order to avoid dissipating resources. By occasionally putting the goal of saving food higher than her personal nutrition priorities, she is making a sacrifice based on the premise that the discarded food item is worth saving.

Sebastian also makes sacrifices in adherence with the principle of saving food from being wasted. He says,

Yes, it is really time consuming. It would be far easier to buy food at the store instead of picking it up at someone else’s place. This is also why I do it only from time to time. I really have to sacrifice my time for it. I could spend the time on something else. But then when I pick it up at someone else’s place I really, really have the feeling that I am getting something special. And then when I cook with it, it does not feel like a food item that was discarded by someone else, but more like a precious gift. (Interview)

Sebastian judges the sacrifice of time required to receive food from Foodsharing to be worth it. Consuming the food gives him a kind of moral satisfaction, and the food item feels special in a way that purchased food does not. The author interprets sacrifice as a normalisation strategy in that, much like ritual, it favourably changes the meanings attached to discarded and rescued foods in a favourable way.

Normalisation

So far the author has identified four strategies for normalising the practices of recovering, distributing and consuming foods that have been declared waste by retail stores. The strategies affect all aspects of practice including actions, objects and meanings. The author now turns to the underlying mechanisms by which the normalisation occurs.

The author proposes that the four normalising strategies work because they strengthen the ties between the food waste and consumer society, and because they facilitate positive meaning transfers to the food waste. Both of these mechanisms make new practices with respect to the food not only thinkable, but actually important. Reconstructing the biographies of food objects allows consumers to see the inherent value in them. Individuals realise that a food item is the result of an accumulation and integration of valuable resources and thus should be granted a higher purpose than mere disposal. That higher purpose is the mission of Foodsharing, which has built a community of like-minded consumers to intervene in the disposal process. The community helps carry out the practices whereby the food is diverted from destruction and redirected back into the sphere of consumption. In honouring the food and its genealogy, the community forms and demonstrates a higher regard for it. The community integrates the recovered foods into a relatively stable system wherein their consumption is modelled as normal and right, and members of the community tend to engage in outreach to non-members in order to broaden the sense of normality.

Normalisation through positive meaning transfer also occurs in part through constructing food biographies and through community building, and the shifts in meaning are further enhanced by acts of ritual and sacrifice. Consider Lukas’s story of experiencing such a shift:

In the beginning I was really skeptical. What for? What is really the purpose? But then I kind of got motivated by the whole community. I remember one older lady. She was dressed in a super expensive way. But she collected the food items and distributed them further. It was kind of ridiculous. She was standing there with her expensive fur and distributing the ugly and dirty food items. (Interview)

As the rather posh lady in question participated in the Foodsharing rituals, sacrificing her own time, she demonstrated the diversity and relative normalcy of the community and of the practices related to food waste recovery. The fact of her apparent affluence made a particularly indelible impression on Lukas.

Shove (2003) conceptualises practices as being comprised of actions, objects and meanings. The practices of recovering food waste, cleaning it up, redistributing and consuming it have been regarded as abnormal for polite society and stigmatising for homeless people scavenging for survival. In order to normalise such practices, Foodsharing operates on all three dimensions. The objects, discarded food items, are subject to repeated actions and through those actions the meanings associated with them are altered. The meanings shift from negative to positive and from abnormal to normal. That the practices are conducted by a community in coordination with legitimate retail organisations adds to the sense of normalcy around them.

Discussion

The findings show how an alternative and highly abnormal practice can be normalised and integrated into a mainstream market through normalising processes. In the specific case, food waste items get linked back to the sphere of consumption and benefit from positive meaning transfer, which results in their being perceived as fit for consumption (Smith Maguire et al., 2015). In the following, the author discusses the theoretical and practical implications of this research.

Theoretical contributions

This research yields implications for the emerging literature stream of alternative institutions, economies and practices. Prior research has studied a variety of alternatives in different industries and sectors. As alternatives emerge, and as the word of ‘alternatives’ implies, they are often positioned against more traditional settings, behaviours, objects and ways of doing things (Guillard & Roux, 2014). As such, they might struggle to achieve a certain degree of normalcy. Prior research establishes that normalisation is a crucial factor for adaptation and mainstreaming in the long term (Rettie et al., 2014, 2012); however, it offers only limited insights (i.e. marketing strategies) into how normalisation takes place and in how normalisation processes work. Answering the call for qualitative research to enhance our understanding of ‘normal’ (Rettie et al., 2012), the author identifies four normalisation processes. This article conceptualises normal versus not normal as two different categories (Belk et al., 1989; Peattie & Peattie, 2009; Rettie et al., 2014, 2012) and normalisation as a category shift. Constructing the biography of an object, building a community, and engaging in rituals and sacrifices all add to the normalisation of practices designed to avert massive amounts of food waste from retail flows. The analysis also allows for identifying the underlying mechanisms, namely positive meaning transfer processes and strengthening the ties with consumer society.

In line with prior research into practice normalisation (e.g. Shove’s (2003) investigation of the normalisation of the practice of showering), this article offers an approach and an understanding that are far more practice-based in comparison to marketing and communication strategies (Peattie & Peattie, 2009). In comparison to marketing communications, a practice-based approach that involves consumers and the focal object (i.e. in this case the discarded food item) seems to be far more fruitful in including objects into the consumption sphere, i.e. in normalising them.

This research has also implications for questions turning around ecological concerns and food waste (see for instance, Visconti, Minowa, & Maclaran, 2014). Understanding the processes of how an object can get included into the market sphere, that is, how resources can be used in a more efficient way, is crucial for progress towards a more ecologically and socially responsible society (McDonagh & Prothero, 2014). Fostering normalisation processes could enhance a more efficient use of resources and help to overcome mental and social barriers that hinder individuals from engaging in responsible behaviour.

Normalisation of more responsible alternative practices is just part of the picture of progress towards sustainability. There is also real potential in and need for de-normalising practices that are viewed as normal despite their detrimental nature. Future research could investigate how practice-based de-normalisation strategies could result in the exclusion of certain objects and practices from the marketplace.

Implications for marketing managers

The findings yield interesting insights for marketing managers regarding alternative practices. First, managers should be aware that alternatives, as opposed to traditional practices, often hold potential for yielding better business outcomes. In the case of retailers and Foodsharing, for example, the alternative practices help stores reduce food waste and perform better with respect to corporate social responsibility goals. However, alternative practices may, as in the case of recovering and consuming food waste, be perceived as abnormal therefore unacceptable to society. Acceptance and adaptation require normalisation processes. A practice-based approach should be considered where mainstreaming or normalisation is the goal. As the Foodsharing example shows, combining alternative practices with community building and a social media platform (e.g. foodsharing.de) may significantly enhance normalisation processes.

These results are also interesting for marketing managers of traditional settings that see their business models confronted by the rising number of alternatives. An in-depth understanding of the process underlying the inclusion of new objects and practices in the marketplace allows those marketing managers to understand alternatives in a better way and to adapt their own strategy (for instance, fighting the alternative or thinking about ways of cooperation). It might also inspire them to think about more practice-based marketing communications as fostered in the literature streams of prosumption and co-creation (Payne, Storbacka, & Frow, 2008; Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ritzer, Dean, & Jurgenson, 2012).

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank John Schouten for his feedback on early version of the article. Finally, I would like to thank the editorial and review team for their insightful and constructive comments on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Johanna F. Gollnhofer

Johanna F. Gollnhofer is Assistant Professor for Marketing at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark, and Research Associate at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Notes

1. Dumpster diving in this context is the practice of retrieving discarded food from supermarket waste bins without the permission or the blessing of store management. Dumpster divers like Victor tend to be relatively affluent activist consumers (Gollnhofer, 2017).