On Tuesday 26 November, Rikolto, EUFIC, the Polish Foodbank Olzstyn and researchers from UGent and the Finnish VTT presented their results after two years of collaboration in the EIT Food SUCCESS project. The main question of this project was: how can citizens and supermarkets take steps towards more plant-based food and less food waste? Maarten Corten from Rikolto attended the webinar and shares his personal reflections.
Who’s in the driver’s seat for changing our food habits? The supermarket, the food producer, the government or the consumer? To be honest, I am so done with this endless discussion. Mainly because blaming citizens for their consumer behaviour feels like an easy excuse for major actors in the food system to not fully address the big challenges. Indeed, the results of the EIT Food SUCCESS project also confirm that we can lay this blame game to rest.
Take the Polish Food Bank's ‘Shop & Cook workshops’ in Olsztyn. There, citizens learned to make sustainable choices in the supermarket and then cook sustainably in the kitchen. Their knowledge was assessed before and after the workshop, and the effect was clear: even long after the training, participants started using zero-waste cooking and plant-based recipes. Moreover, they shared their new cooking skills with friends and family. Citizens are not only capable of learning new eating habits, they also like to spread them in their social network.
Of course, participants in these workshops are willing and motivated to change. But research shows that, in fact, many people are aware of their ecological impact and want to change their eating habits to reduce said impact. However, they mostly do not succeed to put this resolution into practice. The Finnish research centre VTT also mapped consumer profiles within the SUCCESS project. Alongside a group of dedicated believers, they found a large group of people that want to eat more sustainably, but do not get around to it. Bridging that attitude-behaviour gap is the main challenge in the transition to more plant-based eating habits and less food waste. The Polish workshops have succeeded in bridging that gap with flying colours, but if we want to change eating habits on a large scale, we need scalable interventions. That is why we are looking at supermarkets.
It is hard to live sustainably in a world that constantly encourages unsustainable behaviour.
In this project, we strived for a shift in food (shopping) behaviour, beyond the individual responsibility of consumers. Business, civil society, and research partners were involved to maximise impact. Rikolto was the coordinator of the SUCCESS project.
Professor Hendrik Slabbinck (UGent) put it crystal clear during the webinar: 70 to 80% of all the food we eat at home in Europe comes from the supermarket. In supermarkets, we tend to make ‘mindless food choices’, due to choice stress, time pressure, fatigue and so on. Such food choices are susceptible to subtle influence such as nudging. That is why Slabbinck's team designed a nudging experiment in ten Carrefour shops to increase sales of plant-based proteins. VTT's team set up a similar experiment in the Finnish supermarket chain S Group.
The result was similar in the two countries: nudge customers in the right direction using shop design, packaging and inspiring recipes, and sales of plant-based proteins rise. Make no mistake, nudging is not a miracle solution and does not work equally well for every recipe, shop, region or type of consumer. Nudging is not a gut feeling, but rather an evidence-based custom work, Slabbinck stresses. But if one small-scale, temporary intervention can already have midterm effects, what would happen if supermarkets fully and permanently commit to a comprehensive approach?
Moreover, citizens actually want supermarkets to help them eat more sustainably. This became clear during the awareness engagement workshops and citizen panels organised by Rikolto. In the workshops, participants learned about nudging and marketing techniques in the supermarket, in the panels they discovered what supermarkets are (not yet) doing to make sustainable choices as easy as possible. At the end, participants were able to formulate a message to the supermarket.
Those messages were clear: Take responsibility and help us eat more sustainably. While their checkout receipt mainly reflects mindless food choices, these messages uncover citizens' attitudes and values.
Supermarkets can help us eat more sustainably, and citizens explicitly welcome it. So what’s keeping supermarkets from doing just that? That was the subject of the concluding panel discussion in the webinar.
Valentine Papeians and Luisa Rodrigues, both sustainability managers at Ahold Delhaize, link several challenges to the emerging market for plant-based proteins. A lot of consumers are still hesitating due to (wrong) price perceptions, taste and health considerations. They also see a strong cultural attachment to meat and limited knowledge of plant-based recipes. Regarding food waste, consumers have been wrongly raised on the notion of ‘buy more, buy more’. This is why Ahold Delhaize is committed to campaigns against food waste and for plant-based eating. Michalina Jakubowska of the Polish Food Bank in Olzstyn acknowledges these efforts, but thinks more needs to be done. Moreover, she stresses that sustainable choices should be affordable and accessible to socio-economically vulnerable citizens.
Jakubowska also points to the need for mandatory sustainability targets, such as Polish legislation that will soon require supermarkets to donate surplus food to NGOs. This brings us to the government as a crucial stakeholder. Dr Florine Kremer (Wageningen University) thinks the government should create a level playing field so that sustainable policies do not pose a competitive risk. In the Netherlands, Jumbo is currently the only supermarket that will not run any more promotions on fresh meat. This measure is admirable, but not without risk.
The government can impose sustainability targets and policies to push the entire sector. Take, for instance, the recently launched reusable packaging pilot project, for which the six largest Belgian retailers have joined forces. This ‘Reusable Packaging Coalition’ is a response to the upcoming European Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation.
The time for small incremental steps is over.
For Rodrigues (Ahold Delhaize), it is clear that the needed transition ‘is not going to happen in isolation’. Collaboration between all stakeholders is crucial. Betty Chang of EUFIC also recognises the need for collaboration and sees an important role for knowledge-sharing platforms. In the SUCCESS project, EUFIC launched a living database for best practices in retail, and Rikolto launched the Learning Network for Future-Proof Supermarkets.
However, prof Ines Cottignie (KU Leuven) emphasises that a successful multistakeholder approach does have prerequisites. Long-term partnerships need to be built and the actors involved need to take into account power imbalances. And we should not be naive: the pursuit of a level playing field - either through cooperation or legislation - is constantly under pressure from lobby groups. Cottigine concludes that we need transparency and courageous politicians.
Indeed, there are many challenges, but Sarah Braeye of Rikolto believes that we should not lose heart, quite the contrary. Yes, changing an eating culture is no simple task. But culture is not static, argues Braeye, it evolves. That is an opportunity, not only a challenge. All major players in our food system must seize that opportunity with both hands. The time for small incremental steps is over, says Braeye.
I like my colleague's closing note after two years of SUCCESS. Yes, the challenges are big. Of course they are, otherwise they would have been solved long ago with business as usual. We are trying to set up nothing less than a society where ‘mindless choices’ are sustainable. Because it is hard to live sustainably in a world that constantly encourages unsustainable behaviour. That is why only a small, strongly convinced minority is currently able to translate their sustainable values into sustainable purchasing and eating behaviour. The attitude-behaviour gap is not perpetuated by citizens themselves, but by the food environment in which they live. And in Europe, the supermarket is one of the most important food environments. All stakeholders have their role to play, not in the least the government. But the supermarket is where scalable, impactful change can and should take place. Supermarkets are in the driver’s seat. With citizens riding shotgun.
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