The Clean Your Plate Campaign: Resisting Table Food Waste in an Unstable World

Lingfei Wang, Yuqin Yang and Guoyan Wang
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Lingfei Wang: School of Communication, Dushu Lake Campus of Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China
Yuqin Yang: School of Communication, Dushu Lake Campus of Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China
Guoyan Wang: School of Communication, Dushu Lake Campus of Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic threatens global food security and has created an urgent need for food conservation. This article presents a review of clean plate campaigns around the world. It aims to fight food waste and reveal the factors that may influence food waste. The Clean Plate Club in the US developed during wartime and relied heavily on political power for compliance, whereas the Clean Plate movement in South Korea was based on religion. China’s Clean Your Plate Campaign (CYPC) has gone through two stages: CYPC I and CYPC II. The latter occurred during the unstable period of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was large-scale and more strongly enforced than CYPC I. In China, CYPC has relied more on personal virtue than on politics or religion. Culture, policy, COVID-19, and behavior are all important social factors that influence food waste. Specifically, two cultural values are drivers of food waste in China: hospitality and face-saving ( mianzi ). In terms of policy, China’s food waste law mainly relies on persuasion; it lacks any power of enforcement. Laws in France and Italy, by contrast, focus on re-using food and involve both coercion and incentives. COVID-19 may have led to panic purchasing and stockpiling, but, in general, it has resulted in a reduction in food waste.

Keywords: clean your plate campaigns; food waste; consumption stage; food policy; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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