Swipe and solve? Exploring conflicting perspectives on food waste apps

This paper examines how environmentally conscious Rotterdammers’ perceive themselves in relation to the food waste problem and their discourses and practices related to food waste apps as a solution to this problem. The public discourses about food waste apps tell a rather one-dimensional story, praising these apps as a simple solution to a complex issue, thus yielding the assumption that everyone concerned about food waste should be welcoming and using these apps. However, there is hardly any critical engagement with the reception of these apps, neither in the media nor in academia. To address this blind spot, the paper challenges the one-dimensional understanding of these apps and their users by critically engaging with the discourses and practices surrounding food waste and food waste apps and placing them in the neoliberal context they emerged in. Fourteen qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted, transcribed, and analysed to explore 1) citizens’ discourses and practices related to food waste; 2) their discourses and practices related to food waste apps; and 3) the tensions evident in these discourses and practices. A discourse analysis of the interviews shows that depending on the perspective, the respondents adopt two different social identities in relation to food waste. Those identities are based on different beliefs and aspirations and thus entail different discourses and practices regarding food waste reduction. The respondents adopted the “conscious citizen” identity when talking about their concerns about the food waste problem and switched to the “bargain hunter” identity as the discussion turned to food waste apps. However, when prompted to consider food waste apps from the “conscious citizen” perspective, their perception of these apps changed. These findings show that the discussion about food waste apps is much more complex than presented in the current public discourses.