Written by: José Miguel Sánchez Zaballa

Preamble

Building upon personal experience, while working in #WASTELESS, a European-funded project aiming to reduce and prevent food loss and waste across the Agri-food sector. And on the side, executing an MSc. thesis project titled “Barrio Sin Despilfarro” about the development of knowledge-sharing spaces in the city of Barcelona to discuss food waste. This article aims to share the main findings of one of the thesis’s chapters and reflect upon their use in the project’s communication strategy.

The thesis findings

After carrying out interviews with the organizers and participants of the most relevant awareness campaign in the Catalan territory “Aprofitem els aliments”, they all pointed out how correctly using messages that appeal to community responsibility and providing end users with simple tips and tools can increase the impact of the campaign as each type of message contributes differently, one promotes citizen mobilization and the other one provides consumers with tools to start preventing food waste in their daily lives.

 #WASTELESS communication and dissemination strategy.

The WASTELESS project has aimed to provide the agrifood system with tools that ease the quantification of food loss and waste. During its 4 years of funding, it has followed a Dissemination, Exploitation and Communication (DEC) plan, which puts effort into raising awareness about the issue through its social media, particularly LinkedIn and X, but also through other channels, like café talks with experts.

Connecting the dots between awareness campaigns and social media.

At a glance, both strategies, share synergies due to their ability to build capacity across consumers and the agrifood sector. In fact, they put the issue in the spotlight, make it relevant to their respective target audience, and constantly invite the audience to engage with sustainability and be mindful about their attitude towards food waste, and ultimately start adopting new habits. Nonetheless, a clear difference arises as WASTELESS also promotes knowledge exchange. Due to its dissemination scope, the project directly targets experts and actively gathers their input and perspectives on accelerating progress towards this sustainability goal. Communication is therefore not only outward facing but also interactive. Perhaps awareness campaigns could benefit from integrating this knowledge-exchange component more deliberately. Fostering discussion across the supply chain not only strengthens collective action but also builds community and adds value to the work and research of experts involved in tackling food waste.

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