Waste not want not: an entangled essaying of the value of so-called inedible food waste in the home

Food wastage is a global problem receiving increasing attention from policy makers, researchers and everyday consumers alike. Many of the existing solutions to this problem are focused on reducing the quantity of waste to address related issues such as the significant contribution of this wastage to greenhouse gas emissions (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations 2013). But these solutions still treat humans as the ideal endpoint for food matter that becomes waste without problematising this underlying assumption. What if we were instead to shift focus to the vitality of the food scraps themselves, and treat them as continuing actants in a complex assemblage of things and becomings? This creativepractice-as-research project looks to find value in so-called inedible and unavoidable food waste by intervening in normative practices to use scraps as materials for making things. It enacts through and with various creative practices a conversation with key theorists, aiming to ‘stay with the trouble’ (Haraway 2016) of food wastage by treating the scraps a ‘vibrant’ (Bennett 2010) organisms contributing to the ‘tangled texture’ of the world (Ingold 2011). A key method used here is essaying, a making through text, photographic images and sound is that entangles thinking from various disciplines, reflecting on the complexity of living differently with food that might usually become waste. The thesis finds, in line with much social practice theory work in the area of sustainability, that living differently with food wastage would also implicate and potentially change related practices. It also identifies a new potential for collaborative work between the creative practice and social science disciplines that will be generative for problems of sustainability into the future.<br>