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Ethics and responsibilisation in agri-food governance: the single-use plastics debate and strategies to introduce reusable coffee cups in UK retail chains

  • Damian MayeEmail author
  • James Kirwan
  • Gianluca Brunori
Symposium/Special Issue
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Abstract

This paper extends arguments about the potential for reflexive governance in agri-food sustainability by linking food ethics to the notion of ‘unintended consequences’ and ‘responsibilisation’. Analysis of sustainable consumption governance shows the way authorities and intermediaries use food waste reduction projects to ‘responsibilise’ the consumer, including recent examples of shared responsibility. This paper takes this argument further by developing a ‘strategies of responsibilisation’ framework that connects relations between food system outcomes, problematisation in public discourse and strategies of responsibilisation in agri-food governance. A food and drink waste case study of strategies to introduce reusable coffee cups in UK coffee shops and food retail chains is examined to exemplify relations between problematisation and responsibilisation. We examine problematisation and responsibilisation discourses that have emerged in relation to the issue, particularly in relation to single-use plastics, together with emerging governance arrangements and their underlying rationalities. The case study shows two key things: firstly, how ethical questions about food in public discourses connect to wider environmental planetary concerns (in this case packaging in relation to the environment); and secondly, how responsibility has emergent and dynamic properties, which we term ‘cycles of responsibilisation’. The paper concludes by assessing the wider value of applying a responsibility framework to examine governance responses to increasingly complex agri-food system sustainability challenges.

Keywords

Ethics and agri-food governance Food and drink waste Single-use packaging Reusable coffee cups Problematisation Responsibilisation 

Abbreviations

CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility

EAC

Environmental Audit Committee

PRS

Producer Responsibility Scheme

WRAP

Waste and Resources Action Programme

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Notes

Acknowledgements

The research on which this paper is based was funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme, as part of Theme [KBBE.2012.2.5-03] [A comparative analysis of global versus local food supply systems], Grant Agreement No.: 311778.

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Copyright information

© Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Countryside and Community Research InstituteUniversity of GloucestershireCheltenhamUK
  2. 2.Policy and Markets in the Agri-Food Sector UnitUniversity for Sustainable Development EberswaldeEberswaldeGermany
  3. 3.Department of Agriculture Food and EnvironmentUniversity of PisaPisaItaly

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