Business Ethics: Who Is Responsible for the Food Waste?

Who is responsible for the food waste? Consumers or the supermarkets?

According to (Drummond and Bain, 1994) business ethics is the investigation of how individual moral standards apply to the objective and activities of a business. It is not a separate moral standard, but rather the investigation of how the business context represents its own unique issues for the ethical individual who goes about as an operators of this system. Collins (1994) has claimed that business ethics is oxymoron meaning two different concepts are brought together such as in ‘a cheerful pessimist’ or ‘a defending silence’ (Crane and Matten, 2010). This means business is unethical or immoral by its nature or could also mean it’s amoral, and moral behaviour should not be considered in a business (Buchholz and Rosenthal, 1998; Crane and Matten, 2010). Many believe that ethics should only apply on personal lives and should not be mixed with organisational lives (Buchholz and Rosenthal, 1998). The aim of any businesses is to make profit and therefore people working for any businesses should concern about making money, increasing shares, any such business concerns rather than morality (Buchholz and Rosenthal, 1998).

Bond et al., (2013) states “Food waste most commonly refers to edible food products, which are intended for the purposes of human consumption, but have instead been discarded, lost, degraded or consumed by pests, and does not include the inedible or undesirable portions of foodstuffs”.

Food waste is unethical because it is morally wrong. There is no such law that states food should not be wasted however, wasting food has bad impacts on people’s life as well as the environment. In a year, about 15 tonnes of food are wasted in the UK. In one average UK household consumers waste at least £400 per year on food that is just thrown away and by not wasting edible food we could save the equivalent of 17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Food goes to waste for a different reason. Supermarkets are competing with each other which leads to large promotional deals and consumers buy more than they need which ends up going in the bin. According to Hugh 60% of food that the consumers take home are thrown away. Also the confusion surrounding use by and best before dates contributes to food waste. High cosmetic standard contributes to food waste. Millions of tonnes of food are destroyed even before they leave the farm because it doesn’t meet certain standard. Supermarkets’ contract with farmers leads to huge loss of waste. For e.g. the food that does not look good are rejected by the supermarkets. Experts calculate that supermarkets obsession with presenting consumers with fruit and vegetables that looks good leads some 30% of a farmers’ crops being rejected. Even if the food is perfectly good and nutritious but doesn’t match the cosmetic standard goes to waste. Consumers as well as supermarkets are both responsible for food waste. In one part of the world food is being wasted whereas in the other part people are dying of hunger, this automatically makes the food waste unethical. Also, waste of food means waste of money and energy (process to prepare food).

In terms of food waste we can analyse why consumers have responsibility by the consequentialism. Consequentialism is a class of normative ethics. Normative ethics consists of particular theories of how we ought to live. It’s a division between what should we do (deontic ethics) or what should we be (aretaic ethics) or sometimes both. Boatright defined consequentialism as an ethical theory which determines the rightness of an action solely by its consequences. The consequences of food waste such as the contribution to greenhouse gases and the 1.4 billion hectares of land that are occupied with uneaten food which could be used to better society instead. Also food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart estimates that avoidable waste of cereal based foods in the UK and the USA would be enough to lift 224 million people out of hunger. Under consequentialism falls many different forms such as utilitarianism which Maximises human welfare and hedonism which maximises human pleasure by minimising harms. Utilitarian ethics are universal and the good of all should be maximised rather than any individual pleasure gained at the expense of others (Crane and Matten, 2010). Utilitarianism suggests one should always seek the greatest balance of good over evil. The philosopher John Locke argues that if you take more food than you need and let it go waste means you took more than your share and robbed others therefore making this action wrong. The advantage of utilitarianism is that it fits with the idea that the consequences of our action matters and it is right to contribute to happiness than misery. However, it only counts happiness and does not take into consideration that who does something as long as the consequences occur. There are various form of consequentialism. Act consequentialism sees every moral choice anew and it teaches an action is good if it produces more overall good than the alternative action. However, it is difficult to practise as every moral decisions are separate and must be fully evaluated. Rule consequentialism base their rules on consequences and whether an act is good or bad depends on moral rules. However, it is less flexible and does not always produce the best result.

Consequentialism has its criticisms such as impracticality in reality as you cannot predict all consequences of every action. It is hard to predict future consequences of an action and the most a person can do is predict the probability of certain consequences following an action. The other problem with consequentialism is measuring and comparing the goodness of consequences is difficult. For e.g. how does one measure happiness? Consequentialism also do not believe in human rights meaning an individual’s happiness or rights will be ignored in order to increase the overall human well-being. Also in real people do not consider the ethical consequences of their action because they do not have time.

The other ethical theory that can be used to determine why consumers are responsible is virtue ethics. Aristotle is the person most associated with virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is person based rather than action. It analyses the moral character of the person doing the action rather than the ethical duties and consequences of actions Virtue ethics deals with the cultivation of virtuous traits of character as being the primary functions of morality (Buchholz and Rosenthal, 1998). They are personal qualities that provide the basis for the individual to lead a good, noble or happy life (Fisher and Lovell, 2006). Fisher and Lovell (2006) also stated that virtues are not ends, they are means. Virtue ethics emphasises the formation of habits and character traits. It would suggest consumers do have a responsibility for food waste, as to make them a virtuous person as well as embed themselves in a community which is essential for a good life. Virtue ethics is not a set of rules but a set of personal characteristics that if followed will lead an individual to make a right decision in any ethically complex situation (Fisher and Lovell, 2006). It highlights on a way of being rather than a way of doing.