Recycling, recovering and preventing food waste in the United States and France

Overview

Recent frameworks on food surplus and waste establish one hierarchy of preferable categories of solutions: first, prevention (reducing surplus at the source), then recovery (reusing for human consumption) and finally recycling (feeding animals, creating energy or compost). This analysis of multiple stakeholders’ interests and motives shows that actors with different interests in food commodity chains actually develop competing solutions, both within and between three hierarchies based on environmental, social and economic goals. Drawing on a distinction between “weak” and “strong” sustainability, this paper argues that “strong” prevention based on holistic changes in the food system is the most sustainable solution to food surplus and waste.