Growing, consuming, and wasting/disposing: a study of the sustainable food practices of Australian households

ABSTRACT

Sustainable food practices are increasingly of interest to scholars and practitioners concerned with the impacts of food production, consumption, and waste in an age of climate change. Attention has been paid to households as actors in addressing sustainability concerns. This paper draws on a national survey of Australian sustainable household practices to offer insights into the ways households are practicing sustainability across three everyday entanglements with food: (1) growing food, (2) consuming food and (3) wasting/ disposing of food. The paper explores the types of practices enacted across the three entanglements and provides an understanding of the prevalence and barriers for households adopting sustainable food practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• consumption
• food
• practices
• gardening
• Australia
• households

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge and thank Donna Houston and Sara Fuller for their contribution to the broader Australian Sustainable Household project. We thank Sandie Suchet-Pearson for her assistance in editing. We acknowledge EY Sweeney for conducting the survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We acknowledge the complex literatures that problematise the use of the term alternative food networks (see for example J. Cameron and Wright 2014). Throughout we adopt the term diverse food networks to signify other-than conventional food networks.

2 Based on 8,289,084 households in Australia (ABS, 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Macquarie University through a Research Infrastructure (small) grant.