Investigating the Role of Institutional Frameworks in Food Waste Reduction at the Retailer Interface in the European Union

The role of institutional frameworks in curbing and preventing food wastage cannot be overstated. Recently, policy makers have increased their interest in helping supply chain actors to reduce food waste by initiating policies at national and local level, but also opened questions on how such initiatives are affecting supply chain actors’ practices towards sustainable food supply chains. Based on this concern, this study set out to investigate the role institutional frameworks have to play in tackling the problem of food wastage at the retailer-supplier interface within the European Union (EU). To this end, the study mainly focuses on the issue of food wastage in France by taking a look at the impact of the French food waste law on the retail-supplier activities and relationship. This qualitative study underlines that the French food waste law has led to initiatives that are promoting circular economy and closed loop food supply chain, though the policies are being limited by behavioural aspects of actors along the food supply chains. Therefore, this research calls for a better understanding of behaviour of actors and collaboration along the supply chain through the use of information technology to have a full positive impact of the policy interventions towards sustainable production and distribution of food.