Food waste as a property problem

Within a more general context of ‘overconsumption’, the UN estimates that annually 11.39% of total global food production is wasted by households, and SDG 12.3 declares thoroughgoing ambitions to halve food waste by 2030. This article argues that existing efforts to address this global challenge are uncritically premised on the unarticulated assumption that household owners of food are as free to waste it as they are to use it up. The article contests this assumption, drawing on analytical and conceptual accounts of ownership to demonstrate that freedom to waste is not an inevitable privilege of ownership. It explores two plausible models of ownership to this effect, one based on property-limitation rules, one based on a more general recalibration of ownership in the context of food, drawing on progressive property and related theories of property and justice. Ultimately the article argues arguing that, in the context of food, ownership could be reconfigured to include no freedom to waste food fit for consumption. We argue further that is not simply a theoretical exercise, and that such a recalibration of food ownership may have important legal, political, and behvioural implications for the success of SDG 12.