Food rescue in alternative food networks using the example of the B2C marketplace Too Good To Go: A contribution to the dialogue between practice theory and diverse economies

Abstract

Based on original empirical findings the paper presents practices of food rescue within the network Too Good To Go (TGTG). Through their application the company provides a technological infrastructure for selling and buying food which is still enjoyable but no longer saleable and, with this, claims to offer the world’s largest B2C marketplace for surplus food. The central aim is to demonstrate how the conscious avoidance of food waste and the everyday transformation-orientated practices related to it can contribute to a change of our food system. We link this practice-oriented consideration conceptual-theoretically with the diverse economies perspective and foster the dialogue between those two theoretical approaches which have so far rather developed in parallel (Schmid and Smith 2021). This allows a new viewpoint on how the involvement into the “practice conglomerate” TGTG changes and reconfigures operational processes in the network, how the heterogeneity of the involved (more-than-human) actors creates practices of inspiration and negotiation within diverse economies regarding the food system, and to what extent impulses beyond the food segment are emanating from these changes.

Schmid, Benedikt, and Thomas SJ Smith. 2021. “Social transformation and postcapitalist possibility: Emerging dialogues between practice theory and diverse economies.” Progress in Human Geography 45 (2): 253-275. doi: 10.1177/0309132520905642.