A Carrier Bag of Waste Food

Food is being produced, transported, bought, stored, sold, cooked, eaten, enjoyed, disposed of, and sent into and through bodies, ecologies, and different waste, recycling, and/or upcycling systems. Within these disposal systems valuable resources are being lost. Based on empirical work with a local small-scale organic farm (named Hegnsholt), this chapter explores the practices of sharing waste food. Waste food from eateries is a particularly valuable resource for the farm’s hens, which, as a result, are so flavoursome that well-known restaurants and cafés purchase their eggs and chickens. This analysis seeks to contribute to discussions on how we are able to respond to environmental change and inspire for reparative futures by exploring the risky and collaborative practices of sharing food waste. With help from The Carrier Bag Theory (Le Guin 1986) and the mobilities paradigm, this chapter explores the transformative, biosocial, and ecologically contagious gestures of food waste moving within urban–rural spaces. This exploration is unfolded by looking deeper into the farm as a heterogeneous relational-material entanglement of infrastructures, non-human and human, Nordic food stories, waste, food and feed, diseases and risks, and eating and tasting. With food waste and carrier bags, this chapter ought to inspire us to rethink how to share this planet with earth-others.