What’s in the fridge? Science-based strategies to reduce household food waste

Participants identified various drivers of food waste, including overbuying due to store promotions like “2 for 1” deals, social norms such as the “ick” factor of eating food past its “use by” date, being considered “stingy” when saving food and the importance of being perceived as a good host by always having plenty of food at home for guests. Barriers included lack of time, limited fridge oversight, and insufficient knowledge about proper storage and food preparation.  

Proposed interventions that were seen as low effort, easy to integrate or memory aids (like shopping lists, post-it notes on food containers or a clearly organized fridge) were especially popular. Better fridge organization and shopping lists paired with photos of fridge contents were the clear favourites.

Many participants were strongly motivated to reduce food waste, had already implemented effective measures to prevent it, or felt positively about most of our proposals. While this is encouraging for our mission to reduce waste, such high levels of motivation may not reflect the broader population outside of our workshops. To test our interventions in a more realistic context, we asked our participants to imagine themselves in the shoes of others and to invite someone less motivated to join the next workshop.

Based on participant feedback from the first workshop, we adjusted our initial interventions and presented the developed prototypes in a second workshop featuring real-life scenarios. This revealed new challenges and further underscored the crucial role of motivation. 

Some interventions would work well for certain participants but not for others. For example, those accustomed to pen-and-paper grocery lists found digital lists too time-consuming, while adding photos of fridge contents felt confusing and involved too many steps. Similarly, fridge organizing systems were intuitive for some while odd and difficult to keep up for others.