Books

Frugal Value: Designing Business for a Crowded Planet

Frugal Value, by Feedback’s Executive Director Carina Millstone, takes down the notion that companies can rise to the great challenges of our time by adopting so-called ‘sustainable business’ practices. Instead, the acute ecological crisis requires a complete re-think of the firm. This book explores what business responsibility looks like today, and the role, and the limits of, the private sector in driving the transition to a liveable Planet.

‘Millstone silences the happy talk about business sustainability and brings the sustainability concept down to earth, literally. Brilliantly, she shows what sustainability truly requires for both individual businesses and for the economic system as a whole. Persuasively argued and well written, Frugal Value is a path-breaking synthesis that deserves an audience far beyond the business community.’

James Gustave Speth, former Dean, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and author of America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy

‘Ambitious, serious, and inspiring. Required reading.’

Paul Gilding, Former Executive Director of Greenpeace International

‘A book that is unique and much needed.’

Professor Neva Goodwin, Co-Director of the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University

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Bucks Gluts: A Food Citizen's Cookbook

As part of our Food Citizens project in Buckinghamshire we have developed a cookbook showcasing how to make the most of seasonal gluts.

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Routledge Handbook of Food Waste

This comprehensive handbook represents a definitive state of the current art and science of food waste from multiple perspectives.

The issue of food waste has emerged in recent years as a major global problem. Recent research has enabled greater understanding and measurement of loss and waste throughout food supply chains, shedding light on contributing factors and practical solutions. This book includes perspectives and disciplines ranging from agriculture, food science, industrial ecology, history, economics, consumer behaviour, geography, theology, planning, sociology, and environmental policy among others. The Routledge Handbook of Food Waste addresses new and ongoing debates around systemic causes and solutions, including behaviour change, social innovation, new technologies, spirituality, redistribution, animal feed, and activism. The chapters describe and evaluate country case studies, waste management, treatment, prevention, and reduction approaches, and compares research methodologies for better understanding food wastage.

This book is essential reading for the growing number of food waste scholars, practitioners, and policy makers interested in researching, theorising, debating, and solving the multifaceted phenomenon of food waste.

Feedback staff have contributed two chapters to this book. One focuses on our Pig Idea campaign and the other challenges hegemonic conceptions of food waste.

“This book marks a major milestone in the global movement that has seen food waste surge from an ignored issue some years ago to a universally recognised environmental and development priority. It deftly brings together academics, practitioners, radical critics of the status quo, and very importantly gives voices from the Global South their rightful place at the centre of debates about food security and sustainability.” Tristram Stuart

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Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal

The publication in 2009 of Tristram Stuart’s book Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal kickstarted the global food waste movement, uncovering truly shocking levels of waste occuring up and down the supply chain and across the world. In doing so, Tristram questionned the underlying assumption of the food system: that we must produce more food in order to feed a growing, hungry population. Instead, Waste traced the many ways in which the fight to prevent food waste had already begun, and catalysed action around the world, including Feedback’s event series, Feeding the 5000.

‘This is one of those books that everybody should read….It may well change your view of the way we treat food forever.’

Paul Kingsnorth

‘Passionate, closely argued and guaranteed to make the most manic consumer peer guiltily into the recesses of their fridge.’

John Preston

‘Every day all around the globe, appallingly enormous amounts of otherwise edible food go to waste even while humans are starving. Stuart aims to educate people about where such waste occurs, how much of it there is, and what possible steps can be undertaken to reduce it substantially if not eliminate it altogether…. Notes and a huge bibliography lead readers to additional resources on this pressing environmental issue.’

Mark Knoblauch

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