Food Waste Management Solving The Wicked Problem 1St Ed 2020 Edition Elina Narvanen Full Chapter PDF

You might also like

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 69

Food Waste Management: Solving the

Wicked Problem 1st ed. 2020 Edition


Elina Närvänen
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/food-waste-management-solving-the-wicked-problem
-1st-ed-2020-edition-elina-narvanen/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Business Communication: A Problem Solving Approach 1st


Edition, (Ebook PDF)

https://ebookmass.com/product/business-communication-a-problem-
solving-approach-1st-edition-ebook-pdf/

Python Programming: Using Problem Solving Approach 1st


Edition Reema Thareja

https://ebookmass.com/product/python-programming-using-problem-
solving-approach-1st-edition-reema-thareja/

Programming for Problem Solving E Balagurusamy

https://ebookmass.com/product/programming-for-problem-solving-e-
balagurusamy/

Saving Food : Production, Supply Chain, Food Waste, and


Food Consumption Galanakis

https://ebookmass.com/product/saving-food-production-supply-
chain-food-waste-and-food-consumption-galanakis/
Pericyclic reactions : a mechanistic and problem
solving approach 1st Edition Kumar

https://ebookmass.com/product/pericyclic-reactions-a-mechanistic-
and-problem-solving-approach-1st-edition-kumar/

Romanticism, Philosophy, and Literature 1st ed. 2020


Edition Michael N. Forster (Editor)

https://ebookmass.com/product/romanticism-philosophy-and-
literature-1st-ed-2020-edition-michael-n-forster-editor/

Problem Solving and Python Programming E. Balagurusamy

https://ebookmass.com/product/problem-solving-and-python-
programming-e-balagurusamy/

The Problem of Evil: Eight Views in Dialogue N N


Trakakis

https://ebookmass.com/product/the-problem-of-evil-eight-views-in-
dialogue-n-n-trakakis/

Introduction To Computing And Problem Solving Using


Python 1st Edition E. Balaguruswamy

https://ebookmass.com/product/introduction-to-computing-and-
problem-solving-using-python-1st-edition-e-balaguruswamy/
Edited by
Elina Närvänen · Nina Mesiranta
Malla Mattila · Anna Heikkinen

Food Waste
Management
Solving the Wicked
Problem
Food Waste Management
Elina Närvänen · Nina Mesiranta ·
Malla Mattila · Anna Heikkinen
Editors

Food Waste
Management
Solving the Wicked Problem
Editors
Elina Närvänen Nina Mesiranta
Tampere University Tampere University
Tampere, Finland Tampere, Finland

Malla Mattila Anna Heikkinen


Tampere University Tampere University
Tampere, Finland Tampere, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-20560-7 ISBN 978-3-030-20561-4 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20561-4

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
Chapters 1, 2, 12 and 16 are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see license
information in the chapters.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Foreword

Food waste—as the editors and contributors to this excellent volume


demonstrate—is a wicked problem. It brings many of the tensions and
failures of existing food systems into sharp relief. Recent estimates sug-
gest that between 30 and 50% of global food production never reaches a
human stomach. At the same time, many people worldwide do not have
access to sufficient calories or nutrition on a daily basis. Consumers in
affluent nations waste almost as much food as the entire net food pro-
duction of sub-Saharan Africa. Wasting food carries significant economic
costs ($680 billion in industrialised countries and $310 billion annually
in developing countries). The environmental implications are similarly
arresting: if food waste were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd high-
est emitter of greenhouse gases after the USA and China. When food
goes to waste, so too do all of the resources (water, energy, land, labour)
that went into its production. Increasing clarity regarding these eco-
nomic, social and environmental consequences has established the issue
as a key priority for governments and their populations across the world.
It is very easy to forget that food waste was not really on the agenda
10–15 years ago. A post-war food regime of sufficiency and surplus
(at least in the Global North) had rendered it culturally and politically

v
vi      Foreword

invisible. A corollary of this is that academic perspectives on food waste


are very much in their infancy. Early studies focused on quantifying
food waste and evaluating the impacts of different solutions. These were
quickly followed by more critically engaged studies that questioned
the orthodoxy of measurement and modelling. To date, and with few
­exceptions, there has been too little interaction between these two bod-
ies of work. More generally, the literature on food waste remains some-
what disjointed. Individual studies tend to focus on a single point in the
food chain (e.g. processing, retail, final consumption) or clearly defined
geographical locations. The net result of this fragmentation is that the
development of innovative and evidence-based approaches to managing
food waste has been painfully slow.
This collection responds to these limitations and establishes exciting
new directions in food waste scholarship. By clearly and systematically
conceptualising food waste as a wicked problem, the editors present a
framework that helps move beyond the divisions that have stymied the
field thus far. Put briefly, wicked problems are characterised as uncer-
tain, as relentless and as crosscutting. Food waste clearly meets of these
criteria. Acknowledging this is an essential prerequisite for meaningful
discussion about how best to manage it. For example, critical social sci-
ence perspectives highlight the difficulty of defining precisely what food
waste is. Given the old adage of “what gets measured, gets managed”, it
is vital that these complexities are confronted. It is even more important
that embracing ambiguity and uncertainty does not give way to inertia.
No matter how food waste is defined, it still needs managing. Similarly,
the effective management of food waste requires ongoing action and
intervention. In much the same way that it is more appropriate to
talk about promoting rather than achieving sustainable development,
solutions for food waste reduction must be attuned to the processual,
dynamic and relentless nature of food waste generation. Most impor-
tantly, the contributions to this volume collectively address the crosscut-
ting nature of food waste. It cuts across points in the food chain, it cuts
across national borders, it cuts across a diverse range of stakeholders, it
cuts across a number of policy agendas, and it cuts across academic dis-
ciplines. It follows that any effort to manage food waste must cut across
the very same silos.
Foreword     vii

There is an argument that it is precisely these characteristics—those


associated with “wicked problems”—that have driven the issue in
national and global policy arenas. The proliferation of quantitative data
concerning the extent and location of the problem has certainly focused
attention and mobilised a diverse range of stakeholders. The dynamic
and fluid nature of the problem means that it occupies a privileged posi-
tion in relation to a “perfect storm” of related issues (e.g. austerity, food
price inflation, climate change). Indeed, there is already widespread
recognition that food waste is a system-wide challenge requiring a sus-
tained and coordinated effort across disparate actors and organisations.
It may not be too hyperbolic to suggest that this is a unique oppor-
tunity, a moment in which responses to the challenges of food waste
reduction could set the standard for managing future societal transi-
tions. Regrettably, the development and implementation of concrete
and practical solutions have not been forthcoming. These remain an
urgent priority, and this book represents an important step forward. The
individual contributions to this volume are united in their solution ori-
entation. Together they provide an essential resource for researchers and
practitioners who are interested in taking cutting-edge ideas and trans-
lating them into action.

Ancoats, Manchester, UK David M. Evans


Preface

This book Food Waste Management: Solving the Wicked Problem seeks to
find solutions to the crucial sustainability challenge of reducing food
waste. The book presents research-based solutions and practical insights
for the multifaceted food waste problem, involving environmental, eco-
nomic, social and ethical considerations.
The book is a multidisciplinary effort which was initiated by the edi-
tors as part of a three-year research project “Consumer-citizens as active
reducers of food waste” (Wastebusters) at Tampere University, Finland,
during 2016–2019. This project has studied food waste reduction from
the perspectives of consumption practices, networks of actors, meanings
and discourses as well as market solutions. This edited book covers all
these perspectives by bringing together insights from international food
waste researchers who represent various disciplines. The common thread
throughout the chapters is how the wicked problem of food waste can
be solved at various levels of society. This solution-oriented approach of
the book offers a much-needed contribution to food waste research.
The book is a valuable resource for researchers and educators in many
different fields including consumer research, sustainability research,
environmental research, food studies and business management.

ix
x      Preface

Furthermore, it provides insights and implications for policymakers,


business developers, managers and executives, environmental design-
ers, sustainability consulting agencies as well as social movement activ-
ists and influencers… and for all those interested in addressing this
problem.
The introductory chapter presents a framework for this book. The
book is arranged into four parts. The first part focuses on changing the
behaviour of actors at distribution and consumption levels. The second
part examines how actors and activities are connected within systems.
The third part focuses on how sociocultural meanings are constituted.
The final part showcases innovative, practical solutions to food waste
reduction.
As editors, we would like to acknowledge and warmly thank a num-
ber of people for their input in this book project. First, we thank all
the authors for their valuable contributions to this book. Your effort
and cooperation as authors and peer reviewers have enabled this book
to provide such varied and inspiring perspectives to the problem of
food waste. We are also grateful to Professor David Evans for his sup-
port to this project and for his insightful foreword. We also wish to
thank a number of colleagues who helped us as invited reviewers: Maria
Antikainen, Minna Autio, Ciara Beausang, Marie Hebrok, Hanna-Mari
Ikonen, Ari Jokinen, Marjo Siltaoja, Krista Willman and Mika Yrjölä.
We are also thankful for the two research assistants, doctoral students
Outi Koskinen and Taru Lehtokunnas, who helped us in technicalities
and other issues assigned to them during this project. Janice Rayment at
Roundhouse Indexing has provided her expertise in indexing the book
for which we are also thankful.
Further, we are thankful to Editor Madeleine Holder and Editorial
Assistant Gabriel Everington at Palgrave Macmillan for providing us
help in all kinds of questions throughout the publication process. We
are also indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive sug-
gestions for our book proposal. Their encouraging comments helped us
to structure our ideas towards the final book.
Finally, we want to thank the Emil Aaltonen Foundation for pro-
viding financial support for our “Wastebusters” research project during
2016–2019 as well as the Finnish Foundation for Economic Education
Preface     xi

for supporting this book project. We are thankful for the Faculty of
Management and Business at the Tampere University, Finland, for pro-
viding us facilities for executing the research project. We also express
our gratitude to our colleagues for their help and guidance in finalising
this book.

Tampere, Finland Elina Närvänen


March 2019 Nina Mesiranta
Malla Mattila
Anna Heikkinen
Contents

1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste 1


Elina Närvänen, Nina Mesiranta, Malla Mattila
and Anna Heikkinen

Part I Changing the Behaviour of Actors at Distribution


and Consumption Levels

2 Household Food Waste—How to Avoid It?


An Integrative Review 27
Lisanne van Geffen, Erica van Herpen and Hans van Trijp

3 Nudging in Food Waste Management:


Where Sustainability Meets Cost-Effectiveness 57
Anna de Visser-Amundson and Mirella Kleijnen

4 Managerial Practices of Reducing Food Waste


in Supermarkets 89
Christine Moser

xiii
xiv      Contents

Part II Connecting Actors and Activities Within Systems

5 The Evolution of the German Anti-food Waste


Movement: Turning Sustainable Ideas into Business 115
Johanna F. Gollnhofer and Daniel Boller

6 Distributed Agency in Food Waste—A Focus


on Non-human Actors in Retail Setting 141
Lotta Alhonnoro, Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen
and Henna Syrjälä

7 Between Kitchen Sink and City Sewer:


A Socio-Ecological Approach to Food Waste
in Environmental Design 169
Ellen Burke and N. Claire Napawan

8 Creating Resilient Interventions to Food Waste:


Aligning and Leveraging Systems and Design Thinking 193
Danielle Lake, Amy McFarland and Jody Vogelzang

Part III Constituting Sociocultural Meanings

9 Assumptions About Consumers in Food Waste


Campaigns: A Visual Analysis 225
Ulla-Maija Sutinen

10 From Scarcity to Abundance: Food Waste Themes


and Virtues in Agrarian and Mature Consumer Society 257
Outi Uusitalo and Tuomo Takala

11 Mobilising Consumers for Food Waste Reduction


in Finnish Media Discourse 289
Liia-Maria Raippalinna
Contents     xv

Part IV Innovating Practical Solutions

12 Insect-Based Bioconversion: Value from Food Waste 321


Trevor M. Fowles and Christian Nansen

13 Gleaning: Turning Food Waste at Farms


into Marketable Products 347
Christine M. Kowalczyk, Brian J. Taillon and Laura Hearn

14 Exploring Food Waste Reducing Apps—A Business


Model Lens 367
Fabio de Almeida Oroski

15 ECOWASTE4FOOD Project: Cases for Food Waste


Reduction at City and Regional Levels in the EU 389
Samuel Féret

16 From Measurement to Management: Food Waste


in the Finnish Food Chain 415
Hanna Hartikainen, Inkeri Riipi, Juha-Matti Katajajuuri
and Kirsi Silvennoinen

Index 441
Notes on Contributors

Lotta Alhonnoro, M.Sc. (Economics) is finishing her doctoral degree


in Marketing in the School of Marketing and Communication at the
University of Vaasa, Finland. Her dissertation focuses on food waste,
building on practice research and actor-network theory to understand
the complex network of food waste. She has published various articles,
including a book chapter on retail food waste in the book Seven Deadly
Sins in Consumption (published by Edward Elgar Publishing).
Daniel Boller is doctoral student in marketing at the University of
St. Gallen, at the Institute for Customer Insight, Switzerland, and vis-
iting student researcher at Stanford Graduate School of Business, USA.
His research is primarily concerned with consumer decision-making in
computer-mediated environment.
Ellen Burke is Assistant Professor in the Department of Landscape
Architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, USA. She designs and
writes on resilience and regeneration in urban contexts, including food
systems, novel ecologies, landscape performance technologies, and
community-based environmental justice projects. She has published
articles on sustainable food systems in Landscape Research, and the

xvii
xviii      Notes on Contributors

Avery Review and her research investigations have been funded by


ArtPlace America and the Landscape Architecture Foundation.
Fabio de Almeida Oroski is Full Professor and Researcher at the
Postgraduate and Graduate Programs in Food, Chemical and Biochemical
Engineering at School of Chemistry of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. His main research topics are food waste reduction and valorisation;
sustainable sociotechnical transitions focusing on bioeconomy; technologi-
cal innovation management and business model innovation studies.
Anna de Visser-Amundson is Doctorate Candidate at the Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics, the
Netherlands, and a Research Fellow in Marketing at Hotelschool The
Hague, the Netherlands. Her current research focuses on nudging to
reduce food waste and the marketing of “rescued-based” food as one
of the solutions to reduce food waste. Her work has been published in
the Journal of Tourism Futures, Hospitality Management and Hospitality
Technology and in numerous conference proceedings.
Samuel Féret is senior project manager at CIHEAM-IAMM
(International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies)
in Montpellier, France. He coordinated the ECOWASTE4FOOD pro-
ject in 2017–2018 which aims at supporting eco-innovations that con-
tribute to prevent food waste at city and regional levels. Samuel Féret
has an extensive experience in EU networks and policies dedicated to
agriculture, rural development and interactive innovation. He has a
postgraduate degree in sociology, innovation and risks.
Trevor M. Fowles is Ph.D. student in the Department of Entomology
and Nematology at University of California, Davis, USA, who special-
ises on insect breeding, bioconversion of industrial food wastes and use
of secondary insect-derived compounds. He completed a bachelor’s in
biology at San Diego State University in 2011 before joining Campbell’s
Tomatoes Seed Breeding Division, where he bred tomatoes, peppers and
other row crops.
Johanna F. Gollnhofer is Associate Professor at the University of
St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her research is mainly located in the area
of food waste from theoretical and practical perspectives. Her work
Notes on Contributors     xix

is published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Journal of


Marketing Management and the Journal of Macromarketing.
Hanna Hartikainen, M.Sc. from Luke, Natural Resources Institute
Finland, is experienced in quantitative and qualitative data collec-
tion methods and analysis. Her main fields of expertise are food
waste and the environmental impacts of food. She is currently focus-
ing her research on mechanisms that boost sustainable consumption
and production, especially collaborative methods, service design and
communication.
Laura Hearn is co-founder of Glean LLC, an innovative, agricultural
start-up focused on creating sustainable, simple and honest label foods
out of fresh fruits and vegetables. Her prior experience includes serving
as the marketing director for Nash Produce, one of the largest cucum-
ber and sweet potato processing facilities in the USA. She is a graduate
of the College of Management at North Carolina State University in
Raleigh, NC, USA.
Anna Heikkinen, Ph.D. is University Lecturer of Management and
Organisations at the Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere
University, Finland. Her research interests include sustainable develop-
ment in and around organisations, urban nature and discourse analy-
sis. Her work has been published in edited volumes and international
journals, such as Journal of Business Ethics, Business Communication
Quarterly and International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies.
She has also co-edited this book.
Juha-Matti Katajajuuri, M.Sc. is Senior Scientist at Luke, Natural
Resources Institute Finland. He has expertise in several areas, especially
in sustainable and responsible production and consumption, the circu-
lar economy related to the food system and food waste, and assessment
of the environmental impacts of food and packaging systems.
Mirella Kleijnen is Full Professor in Customer Experience
Management at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, School of Business
and Economics, the Netherlands. Her current research interests include
adoption versus resistance towards innovation, customer experience
management, digital marketing and more recently health marketing.
xx      Notes on Contributors

Her work has been published in several academic journals, among


which Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Services
Research, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of
Interactive Marketing and Journal of Retailing.
Christine M. Kowalczyk holds a Ph.D. from the University of Memphis
and is Associate Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management
at the College of Business at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC,
USA. Her research focuses on branding, celebrities and non-traditional
advertising as well as the impact of public policy on these topics.
Danielle Lake is the Director of Design Thinking and Associate
Professor at Elon University, USA. Her scholarship bridges research
on design thinking and wicked problems with the public engagement
movement, seeking methods that foster more inclusive, just, and resil-
ient individuals and communities. These commitments have led to
cross-institutional research examining the challenges of place-based col-
laborative engagement projects surrounding issues of food justice, crime
and community, and educational attainment. She is the recipient of the
John Saltmarsh Award for Emerging Leaders in Civic Engagement and
the John Lachs award for Public Philosophy.
Hanna Leipämaa-Leskinen holds a Ph.D. in Marketing and is
Associate Professor in the School of Marketing and Communication
at the University of Vaasa, Finland. Her research interests focus on cul-
tural consumer research, food-related consumption and sustainable
consumption. She has published, for example, in Journal of Consumer
Culture, Research in Consumer Behavior: Consumer Culture Theory and
Qualitative Market Research. She has co-edited the book Seven Deadly
Sins in Consumption (published by Edward Elgar Publishing).
Malla Mattila, Ph.D. currently works as University Instructor
(Master’s Degree Programme in Leadership for Change) at the
Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland.
Her research interests include food waste reduction, sociomateri-
ality, sustainable business models, and networked innovation and
commercialisation processes. She has published her research in such
scholarly periodicals as Time & Society, Journal of Cleaner Production,
Notes on Contributors     xxi

IMP Journal and International Journal of Entrepreneurship and


Innovation Management. She has also co-edited this book.
Amy McFarland is Assistant Professor of Food and Agriculture in the
Meijer Honors College of Grand Valley State University, USA, jointly
appointment in Environmental Studies. She has an interdisciplinary
academic background with a Ph.D. in horticulture and researches
­sociocultural influences on and from agriculture and the environment.
She works closely with students and faculty from across the univer-
sity to create a learning laboratory at the student farm, the Sustainable
Agriculture Project where students apply skills learned in the classroom.
Nina Mesiranta, Ph.D. is currently Postdoctoral Researcher in the
Wastebusters research project focusing on food waste reduction at the
Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland.
Her research interests are also related to interpretive consumer research,
especially consumer online shopping experiences and social media.
She has published, for instance, in Journal of Cleaner Production, Time
& Society, Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, Journal of
Retailing and Consumer Services and Advances in Consumer Research. She
has also co-edited this book.
Christine Moser is Assistant Professor of Organization Sciences at the
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In her research, she is
among others interested in how food (waste) is organised. She studies cor-
porate social responsibility and offline and online collaboration and knowl-
edge sharing. Her research has been published among others in New Media
and Society, Research in the Sociology of Organizations and Information
Systems Journal. She is a guest editor for Organization Studies and has
recently co-edited a volume of Research in the Sociology of Organization.
Elina Närvänen, Ph.D. is University Lecturer of Marketing at the
Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland. She
is the leader of the Wastebusters research project, focused on the reduc-
tion of food waste (2016–2019). Her research interests are related to
consumer research, particularly from a sociocultural perspective. She has
studied consumption and brand communities, sustainable consumption
practices, food consumption and qualitative research methodologies.
xxii      Notes on Contributors

Her research has been published in, for example, Journal of Cleaner
Production, Journal of Service Management, European Journal of Marketing
and Consumption Markets & Culture. She has also co-edited this book.
Christian Nansen is Associate Professor in the Department of
Entomology and Nematology, at University of California, Davis,
USA. He specialises in applied insect ecology, IPM and remote sens-
ing. Nansen completed his Ph.D. in Zoology at the University of
Copenhagen, Denmark, before joining the UC Davis faculty in 2014.
He has also held faculty positions at Texas A&M, Texas Tech and most
recently at the University of Western Australia.
N. Claire Napawan is Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture +
Environmental Design at the University of California, Davis, USA. Her
research focuses on urban public open spaces and their contribution to
urban resilience, including the development of new techniques for inte-
grating urban communities with their built environments. She has pub-
lished articles on sustainable food systems in Spaces and Flows: Journal
of Urban and Extra-Urban Studies, Landscape Research and Journal of
Urbanism. In 2015, she was awarded the top honour of Vanguard by Next
City, a non-profit organisation tasked with promoting sustainable cities.
Liia-Maria Raippalinna, M.A. is Ph.D. student of Ethnology and
Anthropology at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her doctoral dis-
sertation investigates food waste reduction and consumer responsibility
in Finnish media discourse and among consumer-citizens. Interested
in environmental issues, she is a member of the School of Resource
Wisdom, University of Jyväskylä.
Inkeri Riipi, M.Sc. is from Luke, Natural Resources Institute Finland.
Her area of expertise includes qualitative data collection and participatory
methods. She has experience in sustainable and responsible food produc-
tion and consumption, food waste and environmental management.
Kirsi Silvennoinen, M.Sc. is from Luke, Natural Resources Institute
Finland. Her field of expertise is the ecology of food systems, and she is
currently finalising her Ph.D. concerning food waste in households and
the hospitality sector.
Notes on Contributors     xxiii

Ulla-Maija Sutinen is Doctoral Researcher and University Instructor


at the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University,
Finland. Her research interests revolve around interpretive consumer
research, sustainable consumption and social marketing, which are
also the main themes of her doctoral dissertation. Her work has been
published in Journal of Cleaner Production, Time & Society and The
International Review of Retail Distribution and Consumer Research.
Henna Syrjälä works as Assistant Professor in the School of Marketing
and Communication, University of Vaasa, Finland, and holds the title
of Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research
focuses on cultural and transformative consumer research. She has
published in Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Culture
and Research in Consumer Behavior: Consumer Culture Theory. She has
co-edited the books Seven Deadly Sins in Consumption (Edward Elgar
Publishing) and Multifaceted Autoethnography (Nova Science Publishing).
Brian J. Taillon holds a Ph.D. from New Mexico State University,
USA, and is Assistant Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain
Management at the College of Business at East Carolina University in
Greenville, NC, USA. His research interests include marketing commu-
nications, consumer behaviour and retailing. He is especially interested
in consumer responses to mental imagery in advertising.
Tuomo Takala, Ph.D. is Professor of Management and Leadership at
the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, Finland.
Professor Takala conducts research by using qualitative research meth-
ods. One of his current projects is “Power of charisma and storytell-
ing”. In his research, he also focuses on business ethics and corporate
responsibility.
Outi Uusitalo, Ph.D. is Professor of Marketing at the Jyväskylä
University School of Business and Economics, Finland. Her current
research delves into consumer behaviour, sustainable marketing and
consumption, services marketing and management, places and spaces
of consumption, and consumers’ financial well-being. She is leading the
Sustainable Business Research Group at the University of Jyväskylä.
xxiv      Notes on Contributors

Lisanne van Geffen is Ph.D. at the Marketing and Consumer


Behaviour Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her
research focus lies on understanding the mechanisms behind avoidable
food waste in households. She takes an inclusive perspective by focusing
on individual, social and societal factors driving food waste.
Erica van Herpen is Associate Professor at the Marketing and Consumer
Behaviour Group of Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Her
research focuses on consumer evaluation, use of and choice from (food)
assortments. She examines consumer decisions in retail settings, studying
how the presentation of products and of the store itself affect consumer
behaviour, and how consumers can be stimulated to buy more healthful
and/or more sustainable products. Additionally, her research centres on
how household practices regarding the food assortment at home influence
food waste.
Hans van Trijp is Chair and Full Professor of Marketing and
Consumer Behaviour at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
He received his Ph.D. in Marketing at Wageningen University and has
combined his job in Academia with an affiliation in food industry for
many years. His research focuses on marketing and consumer behav-
iour, primarily from a “social” marketing perspective, namely how these
insights can be used and extended to the case of consumption and pro-
duction of healthy and sustainable products.
Jody Vogelzang is Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University,
USA, and a registered dietitian with a Ph.D. in health services and a
specialisation in community health. Her research focuses on the com-
plexity of poverty, specifically as it manifests in food insecurity and hun-
ger. She has been involved in Design Thinking at Grand Valley State
University for the past three years and has presented at national confer-
ences on the adaptability of this process in solving multi-layered com-
plex problems. Vogelzang is the recipient of the Excellence in Practice
Award in Public Health Nutrition from the Academy of Nutrition and
Dietetics.
List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Framework for solving the wicked problem of food waste 6
Fig. 2.1 Household food management. Dashed lines indicate food
movement between stages, solid lines indicate waste 29
Fig. 3.1 Social norms nudges (Study A) 71
Fig. 3.2 Average food wasted per day during the experiment
(Study A) 72
Fig. 3.3 Average food wasted per day of the week during
the experiment (Study A) 73
Fig. 3.4 Daily food wastage (Study A) 74
Fig. 3.5 Pre-commitment nudge (Study B) 76
Fig. 3.6 Reminder smileys (Study B) 77
Fig. 3.7 Average food wasted per day during the experiment
(Study B) 78
Fig. 3.8 Average food wasted per day of the week during
the experiment (Study B) 79
Fig. 3.9 Daily food wastage (Study B) 80
Fig. 5.1 Google search request for ‘dumpster diving’
(own composition) 124
Fig. 6.1 Bread packages marked with discount sticker
buried underneath new products 154
Fig. 6.2 The waste trolley 160

xxv
xxvi      List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Residential sanitary sewer overflows in San Jose,


2009–2011 (Image created by Brett Snyder
and N. Claire Napawan on behalf of the City
of San Jose 2014–2015 and used here with permission
of the copyright owners) 182
Fig. 7.2 Community co-designed graphics, illustrating
connections between kitchens and city infrastructure
(Image created by Brett Snyder and N. Claire Napawan
on behalf of the City of San Jose 2014–2015
and used here with permission of the copyright owners) 184
Fig. 7.3 Social media content related to #FOGWASTE
(Image created by Brett Snyder and N. Claire Napawan
on behalf of the City of San Jose 2014–2015
and used here with permission of the copyright owners) 185
Fig. 8.1 Design thinking process 205
Fig. 9.1 Phases of data generation 233
Fig. 9.2 Economical consumer: A mock-up campaign poster
(illustration by Kaisa Eskola) 238
Fig. 9.3 Environmental consumer: A mock-up campaign poster
(illustration by Kaisa Eskola) 240
Fig. 9.4 Ethical consumer: A mock-up campaign poster
(illustration by Kaisa Eskola) 241
Fig. 9.5 Childlike consumer: A mock-up campaign poster
(illustration by Kaisa Eskola) 244
Fig. 9.6 Uninformed consumer: A mock-up campaign poster
(illustration by Kaisa Eskola) 245
Fig. 9.7 Active consumer: A mock-up campaign poster
(illustration by Kaisa Eskola) 246
Fig. 11.1 Number of articles featuring the discourses
of consumer mobilisation 297
Fig. 12.1 Two adult black Soldier flies. Adults live only a couple
of weeks, while they mate and lay eggs (a). Black soldier
fly larvae on restaurant waste (b). Once growing
to their full size, larvae exhibit self-extraction
behaviours and move away from their food source 325
List of Figures     xxvii

Fig. 12.2 Typical business process for insect-based bioconversion


of food waste. Note that value can be extracted from both
the elimination of waste and downstream materials, such
as insect protein (biomass), oils, frass, and pharmaceutical
ingredients (Image is modified from an original design by
www.eawag.ch/ and licensed under CC BY 2.0.) 330
Fig. 12.3 Representative process for production of insect biodiesel 334
Fig. 14.1 A group of proposed questions about type of organisation
and business model components 373
Fig. 14.2 Four business model types of food waste reducing apps 384
Fig. 15.1 Food waste innovations matrix (Source Ecowaste4food) 397
Fig. 15.2 Microwave vacuum dryer at MicroFood company
(Credit S. Féret) 401
Fig. 15.3 A.S.O.P. “Dimitra” facilities in Velventos (Credit S. Féret) 403
Fig. 15.4 Meal tray at Avignon hospital (Credit S. Féret) 405
Fig. 15.5 Waste sorting in a Catalan school canteen (Credit Waste
Agency of Catalonia) 407
Fig. 16.1 Quality standard for food waste data collection in Finland 419
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Potential interventions against household food waste 38


Table 3.1 Models of behavioural change 63
Table 5.1 Businesses that incorporate the anti-food waste idea 129
Table 9.1 Description of data 235
Table 9.2 Assumptions related to orientation 242
Table 9.3 Assumptions related to agency 247
Table 10.1 Summary of data 268
Table 10.2 Changing themes and virtues of food waste
in different times 279
Table 12.1 Some insects used for bioconversion, the different
wastes that they can be fed, and the final products 326
Table 12.2 Examples of insect bioconversion companies. Reduction
rates estimated from a Feed Conversion Ratio of 1.7
and 68% moisture content of extracted larvae 331
Table 14.1 Brief description of selected food waste reducing apps 375
Table 15.1 Cases for food waste reduction 399
Table 16.1 List of what needs to be considered in future
questionnaires (Luke 2018b; Joensuu et al., forthcoming) 425
Table 16.2 Data collection methods and the desired sample
sizes for each step of the food chain 434

xxix
1
Introduction: A Framework
for Managing Food Waste
Elina Närvänen, Nina Mesiranta, Malla Mattila
and Anna Heikkinen

The Wicked Problem of Food Waste


There is an increasing political and scientific consensus about the need
to reduce global food waste. In 2015, the United Nations’ Sustainable
Development Goal 12.3 set the target of “By 2030, halve per cap-
ita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce
food losses along production and supply chains, including post-
harvest losses” (United Nations 2015). This target stems from a broad
understanding of the negative consequences of food losses and waste,

E. Närvänen (*) · N. Mesiranta · M. Mattila · A. Heikkinen


Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
e-mail: elina.narvanen@tuni.fi
N. Mesiranta
e-mail: nina.mesiranta@tuni.fi
M. Mattila
e-mail: malla.mattila@tuni.fi
A. Heikkinen
e-mail: anna.l.heikkinen@tuni.fi
© The Author(s) 2020 1
E. Närvänen et al. (eds.), Food Waste Management,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20561-4_1
2    
E. Närvänen et al.

including the waste of land, water and energy, while causing unnec-
essary emissions of greenhouse gases. The Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has estimated that food
losses and waste account for more than 10% of global energy consump-
tion (FAO 2017). Hence, food waste is a major contributor to climate
change. Furthermore, wasting food is a moral concern, since it impacts
global food security and increases the gap between affluent and low-
income people. Food produced for human consumption is wasted at the
same time as a large part of the global population suffers from hunger
and malnutrition. From an economic point of view, inefficiencies accrue
from food losses and waste for both organisations such as farms, food
manufacturers, retailers and restaurants and households.
Food waste can be characterised as a “wicked problem” (Närvänen
et al. 2019), which are defined as unstructured, cross-cutting and relent-
less (Weber and Khademian 2008; see also Rittel and Webber 1973).
We elaborate on these characteristics of food waste as a wicked problem
in this introduction for the book Food Waste Management: Solving the
Wicked Problem.
Firstly, food waste is an unstructured problem, because its precise
causes and effects are difficult to identify, and there is no shared prob-
lem definition. Even though there is now a growing body of research
focussing on food waste quantification and measurement (see, e.g.,
Parfitt et al. 2010; Thyberg et al. 2015; Xue et al. 2017; see Hartikainen
et al., Chapter 16) as well as its key antecedents (see, e.g., Aschemann-
Witzel et al. 2015; Porpino et al. 2015; Stancu et al. 2016), there is
no unified agreement on the definition of food waste. Some defini-
tions take into account both food loss and waste (Buzby et al. 2014;
Gustavsson et al. 2011) throughout the food system, while others high-
light dimensions such as edibility versus inedibility or avoidability ver-
sus unavoidability (see, e.g., Blichfeldt et al. 2015; Papargyropoulou
et al. 2014; Katajajuuri et al. 2014).
In this book, we adopt a broad perspective and consider all types of
food surplus, loss and waste within the food system. Even though food
waste can be defined in various ways, a solution orientation is essen-
tial. One approach for evaluating the different types of solutions is
the food waste hierarchy. It refers to the order of preference for action
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
3

suggested by governmental bodies and political institutions both in


the European Union (EU) (ECA 2016; Papargyropoulou et al. 2014)
and in the United States (US) (EPA, n.d.). The primary focus should
be on actions that prevent food waste from occurring. The second most
preferred measures are those that utilise surplus food or potential food
waste for feeding people, that is, mainly food donations. If this is not
possible, the next level suggests food waste should be used as an ani-
mal feed. The bottom levels, or least preferred actions, relate to recycling
food waste into compost or converting it into biogas or biodiesel. The
least preferred option is the disposal of food waste into landfills or by
incineration.
It must, however, be noted that no solution can solve the whole
problem (Weber and Khademian 2008), and, hence, each solution also
changes how the problem of food waste is perceived. The solutions for
tackling the food waste problem—such as reducing it at the source, dis-
tributing it to people in need and reusing it to feed animals—may also
compete with each other (Mourad 2016). For instance, depending on
the solution, food waste can be seen as a problem to be addressed, as
food or as a resource for further processing. Furthermore, the boundary
between food and waste is often negotiable in everyday life, and, hence,
for actors attempting to reduce food waste, the phenomenon is always
context-bound and dynamic (Mattila et al. 2018b).
Secondly, food waste is also a cross-cutting problem as it involves many
stakeholders in the food system from farm to fork (Parfitt et al. 2010).
However, according to statistics, in the developed world, food waste
occurs mainly at the end of the food chain: by food distribution and
especially households (Bräutigam et al. 2014). According to the FAO
(Gustavsson et al. 2011), the total estimate of food losses and waste is
about one-third of edible food produced, or 1.3 billion tonnes per year.
In the developed countries, more than 40% of food waste emerges at
the retail and consumption levels. In developing countries, in contrast,
most of the food losses and waste occur in the post-harvest and pro-
cessing stages. Also, food waste-related scientific research has focussed
mainly on the developed countries and downstream food waste, espe-
cially on the consumer or household level, but also on retailers,
hotels and restaurants (see, e.g., Aschemann-Witzel et al. 2015, 2016;
4    
E. Närvänen et al.

Filimonau and Gherbin 2017; Garrone et al. 2014; Graham-Rowe et al.


2014; Papargyropoulou et al. 2016; Parfitt et al. 2010).
Many of the suggested solutions for reducing food waste in
the literature have focussed on changing the attitudes and behav-
iour of individuals (see van Geffen et al., Chapter 2), for example
through awareness-raising informational campaigns (for a review,
see Aschemann-Witzel et al. 2017; Quested et al. 2013; see Sutinen,
Chapter 9). More recently, other types of interventions such as those
based on behavioural economics (Wansink 2018; see de Visser-
Amundson and Kleijnen, Chapter 3) and design thinking or techno-
logical innovations (Hebrok and Boks 2017; see Burke and Napawan,
Chapter 7; Lake et al., Chapter 8) have been suggested to complement
the informational interventions. Some countries, such as South Korea,
have even utilised public policy interventions through regulations that
are intended to reduce household food waste and increase its recycling.
In South Korea, households are now charged based on the food waste
they have produced, and regulations have been recently amended to
enable converting the resulting food waste with the help of insects into
animal feed (Bagherzadeh et al. 2014; Jackson 2018; see Fowles and
Nansen, Chapter 12).
In addition to behaviour change, some existing solutions concern
organisations’ strategies, such as linking food waste reduction with cor-
porate social responsibility (CSR) (see Moser, Chapter 4). Many retail-
ers have in recent years started to voluntarily reduce their food waste
by, for instance, donating food to charities and food banks, or redirect-
ing their waste to be used for biofuel production. Furthermore, retailers
occupy a critical intermediary position (Welch et al. 2018) and thus can
impact their own food waste but also that of other actors, such as farm-
ers and consumers (see Gollnhofer and Boller, Chapter 5; Alhonnoro
et al., Chapter 6). Some European countries, such as France and Italy,
have also set legal obligations for retailers to donate food (Vaqué 2017).
Different policy-level solutions regarding retailer food waste have been
identified, including awareness campaigns and changing legislation,
norms and standards related to labelling, product standards and food
donation (Gruber et al. 2016).
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
5

However, in developing solutions for food waste reduction, it must


be acknowledged that even though food distributors and households
may produce the greatest amount of (quantifiable) food waste, they
should not be held exclusively responsible for its emergence (Evans
2011). Instead, food waste occurs at the intersection of several influ-
ences across the food system. These include the myriad ways in which
food is, for instance, produced, transported, processed, packaged and
stored on the supermarket shelves and at home. For instance, at the
consumer level, many routines and contexts influence the emergence
of food waste, not only those directly related to the disposal of food
(Evans 2014). Various value trade-offs characterise food waste as a
wicked problem—actors must often balance between different societal
values (Cappellini 2009; Cappellini and Parsons 2012; Evans 2012a, b;
Devin and Richards 2018; Welch et al. 2018). The ethical values and
principles connected with food waste that influence actors’ perceptions
of the problem have a significant impact on the suggested solutions and
how they are mobilised by actors (see Uusitalo and Takala, Chapter 10;
Raippalinna, Chapter 11).
Finally, food waste represents a relentless problem, which cannot be
solved once and for all (Weber and Khademian 2008). Wicked prob-
lems require various actors to be engaged in solving them through
different activities and at different levels. In addition to the aforemen-
tioned political momentum, both private and public as well as third
sector organisations are involved in innovating solutions for the prob-
lem of food waste (see Kowalczyk et al., Chapter 13; Féret, Chapter 15).
The food bank system, distributing surplus food from retailers to those
in need, has existed for decades and operates globally through different
formats. However, traditionally it has been organised by the third sector
and has not aimed directly at reducing food waste but rather at solving
food insecurity (Galli et al. 2019; Lohnes and Wilson 2018). In recent
years, food waste reduction has started to generate interest in the busi-
ness sphere as well. Food waste reduction and prevention has generated
various opportunities for new innovations. ReFED (2018)—a multi-
stakeholder non-profit dedicated to reducing food waste in the US—
has reported that in the US alone, more than $125 million venture
capital and private equity funding was invested in food waste start-ups
6    
E. Närvänen et al.

during the 10 first months of 2018. In Europe, the Food Waste


Innovation Network (FoodWIN)—an online platform for food waste
innovators and entrepreneurs established in 2014—has over 200 mem-
bers around Europe that work in the domain of food waste (FoodWIN,
n.d.). In the US, ReFED currently lists over 400 non-profit and for-
profit organisations throughout the US in their innovator database.
Many of the new business models that operate in the field of food
waste prevention and reduction are based on utilising the benefits of
digitalisation and the platform economy (Mattila et al. 2018a; see de
Almeida Oroski, Chapter 14). Furthermore, often the new innovations
question and renew the institutional elements, such as norms, symbols
and practices, related to food waste emergence (Baron et al. 2018). Also,
a “community” perspective has been adopted, wherein food banks and
social supermarkets are perceived as key actors in reducing food waste
(Michelini et al. 2018).
This book applies diverse perspectives to reducing food waste (see
Fig. 1.1). The chapters in Part I focus on the level of individual actors
and how their behaviour can be changed to address the problem.
The chapters in Part II focus more on how actors and activities are

Fig. 1.1 Framework for solving the wicked problem of food waste
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
7

connected at the system level—how food waste reduction is diffused


and enacted within different social and material contexts. The chapters
in Part III highlight the different sociocultural discourses framing food
waste reduction efforts, especially in the media. Furthermore, the chap-
ters in the book’s final section, Part IV, introduce cross-cutting cases of
food waste reduction.
The book is a multidisciplinary project, combining research from the
social sciences including business studies, consumer research, market-
ing, media studies, design thinking and environmental research. What
is common to the chapters of the book is a strong focus on the solu-
tions needed to reduce and prevent food waste. In the book, food waste
management is perceived as a multilevel, multi-actor effort to prevent
and reduce food waste through various solutions. In our view, it may
include, for instance, enacting food management skills at households,
stores and restaurants, managing supply and demand for food at all lev-
els and, finally, managing what happens after food becomes inedible to
humans. Hence, it is not only a technical solution related to handling
waste. As the framework illustrates, food waste management requires
shared responsibility of all actors at multiple levels from everyday life to
policy level.

Managing Food Waste Reduction—Introducing


the Book’s Chapters
Part I—Changing the Behaviour of Actors
at the Distribution and Consumption Levels

The first part of the book addresses the practices and strategies for
reducing food waste in households, supermarkets and professional
kitchens. Since retailers and consumers have been identified in many
studies as producing the most food waste, the majority of previous aca-
demic food waste research concerns these actors. The perspective of
behavioural change is interested in questions such as: How can people’s
food waste-related behaviours be changed? What kinds of interventions
8    
E. Närvänen et al.

are most effective? What kinds of everyday practices prevent food waste
and how can these practices be encouraged?
Studies focussing on consumer food waste have drawn broadly from
two different perspectives: individual and societal (see also Hebrok and
Boks 2017). Within the individual perspective, consumers’ decision-
making processes, motivations, attitudes and behaviours have been
studied extensively, utilising, for instance, the theory of planned behav-
iour (TPB) (Block et al. 2016; Graham-Rowe et al. 2015). Studies
have called for informational campaigns and interventions to change
the behaviour of individual consumers (for a review, see Hebrok and
Boks 2017). However, it has also been argued that informational cam-
paigns on their own are not very effective, and many different kinds of
interventions, including those that target both the antecedents and the
consequences of food waste behaviour, are needed (Stöckli et al. 2018).
In addition, positive meanings related to food waste reduction, such as
creativity and aesthetics, have been suggested as beneficial especially in
social media campaigns (Närvänen et al. 2018b).
Secondly, the societal perspective to food waste reduction has drawn
from sociology and criticised some of the basic assumptions involved
in the individual perspective (Evans 2012a; Southerton and Yates
2015). These include questioning the ability of changes in attitude to
impact people’s behaviour. Food waste is not a behaviour that peo-
ple perform intentionally. Rather, it is the consequence of a variety of
everyday life practices taking place in social and material contexts that
influence how people act (Evans 2011). Many studies have drawn from
the practice-theoretical view—analysing the ways in which food waste
can be reduced by changing the elements of everyday practices such
as materials, meanings and competences (Närvänen et al. 2013, 2016;
Mattila et al. 2018b; Hebrok and Heidenstrøm 2019). Furthermore,
the societal perspective draws attention to the active agency of people
in reducing food waste. Consumers may be perceived as active agents
rather than passive targets of initiatives such as educational campaigns
(Närvänen et al. 2018a). Examples of active consumer–citizenship initi-
atives and movements include freegans or dumpster divers (Gollnhofer
2017), volunteer “foodsavers” (Schanes and Stagl 2019) and food blog-
gers (Närvänen et al. 2013). The individual and societal perspectives
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
9

have so far remained quite separate, even though they complement each
other and could provide new insights on driving sustainable change at
the level of individual actors.
In Chapter 2, Lisanne van Geffen, Erica van Herpen and Hans van
Trijp build an integrative review of the existing literature to evaluate the
drivers and constraints for behavioural change to reduce consumer food
waste. The aim of the chapter is to offer suggestions and guidelines for
interventions to prevent behaviours that lead to food waste. Van Geffen
et al. encourage practitioners to focus on two kinds of interventions:
those that focus on goal setting and those that focus on goal striving.
In Chapter 3, Anna de Visser-Amundson and Mirella Kleijnen study
nudging as a strategy for food waste reduction in professional kitchens
and the significance of pre-commitment and setting of social norms to
promote the behavioural change of employees. They argue that cost-
efficiency and waste prevention can be compatible goals while still
providing service excellence. The empirical results demonstrate that
­changing the choice architecture at the professional kitchens has an
impact on food waste. In Chapter 4, Christine Moser builds on prac-
tice theory and discusses managers’ food waste reduction practices in
supermarkets. She illustrates how supermarket managers enact a set of
practices to reduce food waste in order to engage in micro-level CSR.
Moser’s analysis identifies the practices of monitoring food waste, shar-
ing knowledge and collaborating with external stakeholders as relevant
in attempting to reduce supermarket food waste. The chapter also con-
tains practical suggestions for managing food waste at the retail level.

Part II—Connecting Actors and Activities Within Systems

The second part of the book focusses on the interconnections of actors


and activities while making the effort to reduce food waste. This part
is interested in questions such as: How are different actors in the food
system connected with each other? How do these relations and interde-
pendencies help in understanding food waste reduction at the systems
level? How can different perspectives be combined to create cross-
disciplinary insight and innovative solutions?
10    
E. Närvänen et al.

Food waste studies have recognised the need to analyse the food sys-
tem as a whole instead of focussing only on single predefined actors
(see, e.g., Garrone et al. 2014; Göbel et al. 2015; Halloran et al. 2014;
Parfitt et al. 2010). However, often the linear metaphor of a “food
chain” is used to describe how food waste emerges at different stages of
food production and consumption. Food waste does not always emerge
in this linear way: the root causes of, for example, retailer and consumer
food waste may lie elsewhere in the system (Alexander et al. 2013).
Furthermore, the power relations between different actors, such as farm-
ers and retailers, influence food waste: while retailers claim to reduce
food waste, their standards create it elsewhere in the system (Devin and
Richards 2018). On the other hand, actors may also facilitate other
actors’ food waste reduction, such as when retailers improve the pack-
aging, pricing strategies and communications targeted at consumers in
order to affect a change in household food waste (Aschemann-Witzel
et al. 2016).
These interdependencies and complex relations between the actors
and activities in the food system are seldom identified. Exceptions to
this include studies that have addressed global and intersectoral con-
nections in food waste reduction by adopting a food systems approach
(Galli et al. 2019), food waste regime approach (Gille 2012) and ser-
vice ecosystem perspective (Baron et al. 2018). These studies highlight
that in order to accomplish systemic change towards sustainability, insti-
tutional structures need to be disrupted. Technological innovations or
isolated, stand-alone solutions will not be enough to accomplish sys-
temic change. The chapters of this section of the book discuss the inter-
dependencies of actors and activities in the food (waste) system from
various perspectives, including the public/private, visible/invisible and
human/non-human.
In Chapter 5, Johanna Gollnhofer and Daniel Boller show how
the business practice of selling ugly fruit has its roots in the German
anti-food waste movement and activism. After dumpster divers had
increased the awareness of retail food waste, food-sharing organisations
started to collaborate with retailers. Finally, retailers started to monet-
ise these anti-food waste practices by selling ugly fruit and vegetables.
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
11

The chapter shows how the seemingly distinct interests of actors can
co-evolve in the quest to solve systemic challenges.
In addition to acknowledging human actors and their intercon-
nected relationships, some studies have emphasised the critical role
of various objects and materials in the wicked problem of food waste,
such as domestic technologies, foodstuffs and food containers (Evans
2018; Waitt and Phillips 2016; Watson and Meah 2012; Mattila et al.
2018b; Hebrok and Heidenstrøm 2019). These studies posit that food
and waste are to be considered lively (more-than-human) matters. As
such, they contain negotiable boundaries and, consequently, ephemeral
“becomings”. Thus, the studies argue that transformations of food into
waste and ways to mitigate these occurrences need to be understood in
relation to multiple, continual and complex movements among various
interconnected human and non-human actors.
Recently, this metaphorical systems view has been extended to a
retail setting (Midgley 2019). In Chapter 6, Lotta Alhonnoro, Hanna
Leipämaa-Leskinen and Henna Syrjälä present a novel approach to the
issue by focussing on the interactions of various heterogeneous actors in
a supermarket’s bread and bakery section, and how they may—or may
not—generate food waste. The study shows that employees’ everyday
working practices involve several situations and activities in which mul-
tiple human and non-human actors together engage in negotiating and
setting boundaries between saleable and non-saleable bread and bakery
products and, further, between food and waste. Without giving careful
attention to various materials, the many ways to influence food waste
reduction in the retail setting may be ignored.
The following two chapters in this part move from focussing on a sin-
gle site such as a retailer to analysing how practices traditionally per-
ceived to take place in one site, such as the home, are actually connected
to larger systems, such as the sewer system. Both Chapters 7 and 8 criti-
cise the ability of stand-alone techno-scientific interventions to solve the
wicked problem of food waste.
In Chapter 7, Ellen Burke and N. Claire Napawan assess the role
of environmental design in addressing food waste and suggest a socio-
ecological approach to environmental design to create effective solutions
to food waste. They utilise different approaches: urban metabolism,
12    
E. Närvänen et al.

community resilience and participatory design as well as ecofeminism


to discuss the case of #FOGWASTE—a project commissioned by the
City of San Jose, California, in the US—educating and activating cit-
izens in the context of liquid food waste (fats, oils and grease). Burke
and Napawan argue for a more fluid approach to environmental design
where the interdependence of domestic practices, urban infrastructure
and natural systems is recognised.
In Chapter 8, Danielle Lake, Amy McFarland and Jody Vogelzang
discuss how systems thinking and design thinking can be combined
to develop interventions to reduce food waste. Drawing insights from
these approaches, the authors suggest ten strategies for change agents
(e.g. activists, policymakers, purchasing agents and restaurant manag-
ers) to plan and implement resilient interventions. The authors illus-
trate these strategies by analysing a case of a transdisciplinary living lab,
“Wealth from Waste”, in two universities in Sydney, Australia. In the
case, the students, faculty members and industry representatives were
invited to co-create interventions that fit the proposed strategies. All in
all, the authors argue for solutions that are transdisciplinary, holistic and
systematic.

Part III—Constituting Sociocultural Meanings

The third part of the book presents a sociocultural view of food waste
reduction. The view directs attention to the various meanings, under-
standings, discourses and values that are constructed, maintained and
reconstructed in the society. These sociocultural meanings of food waste
allow for understanding how the issue is interlinked with the develop-
ment of the society. Consequently, the sociocultural view is interested
in questions such as: How do the meanings of food waste evolve and
vary? Why, in different spatial and temporal contexts, might food waste
be seen as a key challenge for humanity, a business opportunity or a
non-issue? What are the consequences of such views?
The sociocultural view is grounded in the linguistic turn originat-
ing from social sciences and in social constructionism (Berger and
Luckmann 1966). According to the social constructionist tradition,
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
13

social reality is created and maintained by humans in social interactions.


Furthermore, social activity is seen as a linguistic and discursive pro-
cess constructing social phenomena with material consequences (Burr
1995; Crotty 1998). The particular appeal of focussing on language
use and accepting the material consequences of such activity is that
this approach, basically, offers possibilities for understanding the ori-
gins of and motivations for actions (Heikkinen et al. 2017; Joutsenvirta
2009). This approach also allows for the intended and unintended con-
sequences of language use to be scrutinised. Thus, the research interest
becomes located on how certain ways of talking about and understand-
ing food waste may facilitate or hinder the efforts of steering corporate
or consumer behaviour (Evans et al. 2012; Joutsenvirta 2009). To sum
up, the sociocultural view of food waste builds on two focal notions.
First, language is not a transparent medium to “reality”; rather, language
constructs, maintains and recreates social realities. Second, meanings
and discourses are viewed as constituting and being constituted by the
social and cultural norms, values and habits related to practices of food
waste reduction.
Previous research on food waste utilising the sociocultural perspec-
tive has been scattered among different disciplines, such as sociology,
marketing and consumer research, management and organisation stud-
ies and environmental policy research (for a discussion, see Evans et al.
2012). Culturally and linguistically oriented food waste literature has
examined, firstly, how food waste can be defined. This means studying
how the edibility or inedibility of food is culturally and socially con-
structed; that is, how food is re-conceptualised as waste (Blichfeldt et al.
2015; Brunori et al. 2013; Campbell et al. 2017; Evans 2011, 2012b;
Evans et al. 2012; Thompson and Haigh 2017). Secondly, and building
on the first point, attention has been paid to the consequences and sig-
nificance of food waste understandings. This approach seeks to explicate
the sociocultural—including the political, economic and ideological—
relationships in which food waste is embedded (Evans et al. 2012). In
research, this means asking how the ways of talking about and under-
standing food waste are linked to the actions of individuals, groups,
organisations and society at large (Närvänen et al. 2016). While there
has been increased attention on the sociocultural view of food waste,
14    
E. Närvänen et al.

research is still limited in understanding how societal actors, media,


marketing professionals, managers and consumers, among others,
describe and explain the issues of food waste and food waste reduction.
The three articles in this book make an insightful contribution to this
area of research.
The third part of the book consists of three chapters that examine
the sociocultural meanings of food waste in different texts. The socio­
cultural view brings forth the non-places along with the places, such
as supermarkets and households, where food waste meanings are con-
structed. Previous research on non-places has examined, for instance,
reality television programmes (Thompson and Haigh 2017) and public
discourse taking place in the entertainment media, popular press and
news media (Frye and Fox 2015). In this part, the focus is particularly
on non-places, such as consumer educational campaign material and
media texts.
In Chapter 9, Ulla-Maija Sutinen examines what kinds of assump-
tions about consumers are constructed in the visual material of food
waste campaigns. This chapter builds on the social marketing and con-
sumer behaviour change literatures and utilises semiotic analysis to
explicate the visual materials of 14 food waste campaigns organised in
Finland and Sweden. Sutinen presents six assumptions about consum-
ers reflecting the assumed orientation and agency of consumers. The
chapters suggest that currently the cognitive approach emphasising the
rationality of consumers prevails in the campaigns and that change in
consumer behaviour can be advanced by constructing campaigns that
also utilise affective, conative and sociocultural approaches.
Food waste meanings are often discussed in relation to the ethical,
moral and value-laden aspects of food waste (Thompson and Haigh
2017), CSR and power (Devin and Richards 2018). Chapter 10 by
Outi Uusitalo and Tuomo Takala focusses on the societal values, virtues
and practices that foster food waste reduction. The chapter sheds light
on the so far scarcely researched socio-philosophical and ethical issues
underlying food waste behaviour in the food chain. Uusitalo and Takala
analyse Finnish media texts and show how virtues related to food waste
practices have manifested themselves in agrarian (1885–1917) and
mature consumer society (2008–2017). This chapter highlights how
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
15

ethical principles can underpin our understanding of food waste and


how food chain actors’ virtues can guide practices towards more sustain-
able ways of handling excess food.
Another focal topic related to the sociocultural approach is the
responsibilisation and mobilisation of consumers (Evans et al. 2017).
Continuing with a focus on Finnish media texts, Chapter 11 by Liia-
Maria Raippalinna analyses how consumers are mobilised for food waste
reduction in media discourse. The chapter builds on governmentality
studies and practice theoretical approach to sustainable consumption.
By using critical discourse analysis, Raippalinna analyses the discur-
sive construction of food waste and consumers in the leading Finnish
newspaper during 2010–2017. The findings present three discourses of
consumer mobilisation: scientific-political discourse, home econom-
ics discourse and the discourse of new urban food culture. Raippalinna
argues that any transformation of consumer food waste practices
requires that media discourse integrates and normalises food waste pre-
vention and reduction as a part of all media discourses and genres.

Part IV—Innovating Practical Solutions

The fourth and final part of this book includes five chapters showcasing
various types of practical solutions and innovations to food waste reduc-
tion and prevention. In Chapter 12, Trevor M. Fowles and Christian
Nansen discuss how utilising various insects to process food waste—
that is, insect-based bioconversion—can provide a solution to turn food
waste into valuable materials. This process—offering viable business
opportunities as well—allows food waste to be converted into animal
feed and food for people as well as into secondary industrial compounds
such as biofuel or pharmaceuticals. After conversion, the leftover waste
can be further used, for example, as a soil amendment. Even though not
encouraging prevention of food waste per se, insect-based bioconversion
is an example of a solution that diverts food waste back into different
levels of the food waste hierarchy.
In Chapter 13, Christine Kowalczyk, Brian J. Taillon and Laura
Hearn present another opportunity for waste reduction in the often
16    
E. Närvänen et al.

neglected farming industry where food waste has become a problem,


also creating economic losses for farmers. In their article, they discuss
the benefits of gleaning—recovering farm produce left behind after har-
vesting due to, for example, strict cosmetic standards—and how the
challenges of a more traditional gleaning model (where volunteers glean
farm produce for charities and food banks) can be overcome through
introducing a gleaning business model.
To continue with solutions that are enabled more by technology, in
Chapter 14, Fabio de Almeida Oroski analyses the business models of
various applications designed to sell or donate surplus food on digital
platforms. As reusing surplus food for human consumption is often
a race against time (before the food becomes unfit for humans), dig-
ital platforms bring together and can facilitate transactions between
those actors with a supply of surplus food (e.g. restaurants, retailers
and consumers) and those that require surplus food (e.g. food banks
and charities). As de Almeida Oroski illustrates, digital platforms
and applications can be beneficial for both non-profit and for-profit
organisations.
The final two chapters in the fourth part concentrate on implement-
ing food reduction and prevention policies in practice. In Chapter 15,
Samuel Féret discusses the EU-funded ECOWASTE4FOOD project
through which local and regional authorities from seven EU c­ ountries
collaborate by sharing and exchanging experiences on food waste-
reducing innovations in their regions. As a result of this and local stake-
holder collaboration, the project helps the partners in designing action
plans for their regions in order to comply with food reduction policy
targets set by the EU. In his article, Féret introduces examples from var-
ious regions and from various levels of the food waste hierarchy, includ-
ing also those preventing food waste.
In Chapter 16, Hanna Hartikainen, Inkeri Riipi, Juha-Matti
Katajajuuri and Kirsi Silvennoinen, on the other hand, focus on the
approaches to and challenges of implementing EU food waste measure-
ment and monitoring in practice. They discuss how this EU-level policy
can best be implemented for monitoring food waste in various parts of
the food chain in Finland, but also how monitoring quantities of food
waste helps to direct action for food waste reduction.
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
17

Conclusions
Food waste research has gradually moved from focussing on under-
standing the phenomenon and measuring it towards less actor-centric,
more holistic approaches. This book represents this development as it
combines research from multiple fields and a variety of theoretical per-
spectives, as well as provides practical insights about the issue.
Since food waste is a wicked problem, it is important to adopt a
holistic view. The chapters of this book discuss different levels where
change is needed: actors, systems and sociocultural and institutional
structures. This introductory chapter introduces a framework that
incorporates the chapters and their relations to each other in solving the
wicked problem of food waste. Accordingly, it highlights the need for
interconnected, multilevel solutions that go beyond single actors and
activities within predefined silos of the food system. Furthermore, even
though food waste can be perceived as a resource, the solutions (such as
conversion to biogas) should not increase the demand for food waste.
Instead, preferable solutions should create incentives to prevent it from
emerging. The framework also operates as a platform for future research
related to food waste, hopefully inspiring researchers to adopt new ave-
nues focussed on ensuring its prevention.
In addition to the solutions provided by this book, we argue that
solving the wicked problem of food waste will require both incentives
and sanctions. Reducing and preventing food waste needs to be consid-
ered as positive—on the assumption that appeals to guilt seldom spur
action. However, remaining at the level of individual actors will not be
sufficient as the impactful solutions may lie elsewhere than where the
food waste occurs. Furthermore, there needs to be regulatory pressure to
sanction behaviours leading to food waste as, despite being aware of the
problem, actors might not own the problem.
In managing food waste, we need active change agents to develop
and implement solutions at different levels of the food system as well
as more holistically between systems. The current food system faces a
variety of wicked problems, of which food waste is just one. A sustaina-
ble future requires the critical evaluation and transformation of the food
system as a whole. We hope that this book will provide research-based
18    
E. Närvänen et al.

insights and solutions for these change agents and inspire them to act as
well as mobilise others in the quest to battle against the wicked problem
of food waste.

References
Alexander, C., Gregson, N., & Gille, Z. (2013). Food waste. In A. Murcott,
W. Belasco, & P. Jackson (Eds.), The handbook of food research (pp. 471–
484). London: Bloomsbury.
Aschemann-Witzel, J., De Hooge, I., Amani, P., Bech-Larsen, T., &
Oostindjer, M. (2015). Consumer-related food waste: Causes and potential
for action. Sustainability, 7(6), 6457–6477.
Aschemann-Witzel, J., De Hooge, I., & Normann, A. (2016). Consumer-
related food waste: Role of food marketing and retailers and potential for
action. Journal of International Food & Agribusiness Marketing, 28(3),
271–285.
Aschemann-Witzel, J., De Hooge, I. E., Rohm, H., Normann, A., Bossle, M. B.,
Grønhøj, A., et al. (2017). Key characteristics and success factors of supply
chain initiatives tackling consumer-related food waste—A multiple case study.
Journal of Cleaner Production, 155, 33–45.
Bagherzadeh, M., Inamura, M., & Jeong, H. (2014). Food waste along the
food chain. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers, No. 71. Paris:
OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5jxrcmftzj36-en. Accessed
on 19.3.2019.
Baron, S., Patterson, A., Maull, R., & Warnaby, G. (2018). Feed people first:
A service ecosystem perspective on innovative food waste reduction. Journal
of Service Research, 21(1), 135–150.
Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A trea-
tise in the sociology of knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Blichfeldt, B. S., Mikkelsen, M., & Gram, M. (2015). When it stops being
food: The edibility, ideology, procrastination, objectification and internali-
zation of household food waste. Food, Culture & Society, 18(1), 89–105.
Block, L. G., Keller, P. A., Vallen, B., Williamson, S., Birau, M. M., Grinstein,
A., et al. (2016). The squander sequence: Understanding food waste at each
stage of the consumer decision-making process. Journal of Public Policy &
Marketing, 35(2), 292–304.
1 Introduction: A Framework for Managing Food Waste    
19

Bräutigam, K. R., Jörissen, J., & Priefer, C. (2014). The extent of food waste
generation across EU-27: Different calculation methods and the reliability
of their results. Waste Management and Research, 32(8), 683–694.
Brunori, G., Malandrin, V., & Rossi, A. (2013). Trade-off or convergence? The
role of food security in the evolution of food discourse in Italy. Journal of
Rural Studies, 29, 19–29.
Burr, V. (1995). An introduction to social constructionism. London: Routledge.
Buzby, J. C., Farah-Wells, H., & Hyman, J. (2014). The estimated amount,
value, and calories of postharvest food losses at the retail and consumer levels
in the United States. EIB-121. United States Department of Agriculture,
Economic Research Service, Economic Information Bulletin Number 112.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/43833/43680_eib121.pdf.
Accessed on 26.2.2019.
Campbell, H., Evans, D., & Murcott, A. (2017). Measurability, austerity
and edibility: Introducing waste into food regime theory. Journal of Rural
Studies, 51, 168–177.
Cappellini, B. (2009). The sacrifice of re-use: The travels of leftovers and fam-
ily relations. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 8(6), 365–375.
Cappellini, B., & Parsons, E. (2012). Practising thrift at dinnertime: Mealtime
leftovers, sacrifice and family membership. The Sociological Review, 60,
121–134.
Crotty, M. (1998). The foundations of social research: Meaning and perspective in
the research process. London: Sage.
Devin, B., & Richards, C. (2018). Food waste, power, and corporate social
responsibility in the Australian food supply chain. Journal of Business Ethics,
150(1), 199–210.
ECA. (2016). Combating food waste: An opportunity for the EU to improve
the resource-efficiency of the food supply chain. European Court of Auditors.
Special report no 34/2016. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the
European Union. https://www.eca.europa.eu/Lists/ECADocuments/SR16_
34/SR_FOOD_WASTE_EN.pdf. Accessed on 22.2.2019.
EPA. (n.d.). Food recovery hierarchy. United States Environmental Protection
Agency. https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recovery-
hierarchy. Accessed on 22.2.2019.
Evans, D. (2011). Blaming the consumer—Once again: The social and mate-
rial contexts of everyday food waste practices in some English households.
Critical Public Health, 21(4), 429–440.
20    
E. Närvänen et al.

Evans, D. (2012a). Beyond the throwaway society: Ordinary domestic prac-


tice and a sociological approach to household food waste. Sociology, 46(1),
41–56.
Evans, D. (2012b). Binning, gifting and recovery: The conduits of disposal in
household food consumption. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space, 30(6), 1123–1137.
Evans, D. (2014). Food waste: Home consumption, material culture and everyday
life. London: Bloomsbury.
Evans, D. M. (2018). Rethinking material cultures of sustainability:
Commodity consumption, cultural biographies and following the thing.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43(1), 110–121.
Evans, D., Campbell, H., & Murcott, A. (2012). A brief pre-history of food
waste and the social sciences. The Sociological Review, 60(2_suppl), 5–26.
Evans, D., Welch, D., & Swaffield, J. (2017). Constructing and mobilizing
‘the consumer’: Responsibility, consumption and the politics of sustainabil-
ity. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 49(6), 1396–1412.
FAO. (2017). The future of food and agriculture—Trends and challenges. Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org/3/
a-i6583e.pdf. Accessed on 26.2.2019.
Filimonau, V., & Gherbin, A. (2017). An exploratory study of food waste
management practices in the UK grocery retail sector. Journal of Cleaner
Production, 167, 1184–1194.
FoodWIN. (n.d.). Network. https://foodwin.org/network/. Accessed on
22.2.2019.
Frye, J., & Fox, R. (2015). The rhetorical construction of food waste in US
public discourse. Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 5(4), 43–57.
Galli, F., Cavicchi, A., & Brunori, G. (2019). Food waste reduction and food
poverty alleviation: A system dynamics conceptual model. Agriculture and
Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09919-0.
Garrone, P., Melacini, M., & Perego, A. (2014). Opening the black box of
food waste reduction. Food Policy, 46, 129–139.
Gille, Z. (2012). From risk to waste: Global food waste regimes. The
Sociological Review, 60(2_suppl), 27–46.
Göbel, C., Langen, N., Blumenthal, A., Teitscheid, P., & Ritter, G. (2015).
Cutting food waste through cooperation along the food supply chain.
Sustainability, 7(2), 1429–1445.
Gollnhofer, J. F. (2017). The legitimation of a sustainable practice through dia-
lectical adaptation in the marketplace. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing,
36(1), 156–168.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
CHAPTER V.
THE NAVAL BRIGADE LANDS.

W HEN I went on deck the following morning, I found that the


steam-pinnace had towed the Flying-fish to an anchorage in
the roadstead not many cable lengths from the Rattler. I at once
observed the strong resemblance she bore to the Snapping Turtle,
and I no longer felt surprise at the mistake Mr. Osborne had made at
Santiago de Cuba.
Mr. Thompson was standing by the taffrail narrowly observing her
through a telescope.
“I should like to see a race between her and the Snapping Turtle,
sir,” I said to him. “I’m not surprised the Yankee skipper was so keen
on it, for they’re wonderfully alike in build and rig.”
“Indeed they are,” answered the lieutenant; “one might almost call
them twin-vessels. The main difference is that the American’s masts
rake more.”
“It’s a curious thing about the cargo having been all taken out of
the Flying-fish, sir; and by all accounts it’s a valuable one.”
The gunnery lieutenant turned and looked at me keenly.
“You young rascal,” he said, “you’re trying to pump me; but you do
it in such a clumsy way that I can’t help seeing through you.”
I felt rather confused.
“Well, sir,” I said, “I do hope that I may be allowed to go on the
expedition up country if it is true that a force is to be landed.”
“It will be no secret in an hour’s time, Darcy, so I may as well tell
you that to-morrow morning a naval brigade is to be landed in order
to hunt down the mutineers and rebels; and I think there is a very fair
chance of your being able to go. The captain, I believe, has
permission from the captain-general to take any steps he may think
necessary to bring the delinquents to justice.”
I begged the gunnery lieutenant, who had always shown me great
kindness, to try to get me appointed to the expedition, and he
promised to use his influence in that direction. I then ran off to the
sick-bay to see my friend Charlie and tell him the news, which I felt
sure he had not as yet heard. I found him much better; and the
surgeon, who was just leaving the sick-bay as I entered, told me that
I need have no fear as to his recovery.
This was very good news; but I found that I had been forestalled
as news-carrier by Dr. Grant, and that Charlie was as well informed
on the subject of the expedition as I was myself.
“It’s jolly hard lines that I can’t go, old chap,” he said to me; “but
the surgeon says I must be on the broad of my back and nurse this
wretched old head of mine for some time to come. Pleasant
prospect, eh?”
“I’m very sorry indeed,” I answered; “and you must try to console
yourself with the fact that you’ve still a head screwed tight and fast
on your shoulders. Poor Lobb had his taken off by a round-shot.”
“Oh, I’m as grateful as anything, of course, Jack; not only on my
own account, but because as an out-and-out patriot I have the best
interests of my country at heart. What an irreparable loss it would
have been to Great Britain if my brains had bespattered the battle-
field! National mourning for a fortnight, eh, and messages to my
bereaved relatives from the Queen and the other members of the
royal family, to say nothing of minute guns, half-mast flags, and a
tomb near Nelson’s in the crypt of St. Paul’s? By Jove! it makes me
quite excited to think of it.”
“Has Grant ordered you any soothing draught?” I asked, hunting
about with pretended anxiety amongst a whole brigade of medicine-
bottles that stood upon a table at my elbow.
“Yes; Mother Gimcrack’s soothing syrup!” said my chum with a
laugh. “Good for teething babes; and do you know, Jack”—this very
solemnly—“I lost two or three of my front teeth in that nasty
somersault I took yesterday. My beauty is gone for ever and ever!”
I had noticed the disfigurement my friend referred to, but had not
alluded to it for fear of hurting his feelings.
“There is always a silver lining to the cloud,” continued Charlie
more cheerfully. “That rascal of a gunroom steward won’t be able to
palm off on me any longer his wofully tough salt horse and brickbat
biscuit. No; he’ll have to feed me on a special diet of Brand’s beef
jelly, Benger’s food, turtle soup, and jams of all sorts, varied
occasionally by oysters (real natives of course), tipsy cake, and fruit
jellies. Not a bad idea, eh? I’ll give you a tuck-in now and again,
Jack, as you’re a good chum to me!”
“Thanks, awfully!” I said; “but I’m certain the steward would rather
go to the expense of buying you a new set of teeth from a London
dentist, than feed you up on all the delicacies of the season for the
rest of the commission. Now I’m certain you oughtn’t to talk any
more, Charlie, so I’m going to make myself scarce; and you must try
to sleep till dinner-time, when I shall come and see you again.”
Half an hour later the Rattler was a scene of great excitement, for
orders had gone forth that immediate preparations were to be made
for landing a powerful naval brigade. I was very quickly caught up in
the whirl of excitement, for Ned Burton, the coxswain of my boat,
came hurrying to me to say that he had received orders from the first
lieutenant to get the second cutter in readiness to assist in landing
men, stores, and ammunition.
“It’s to be a picked force, sir,” said the seaman in conclusion, “and
I’m glad to say that we’re both detailed for service.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” I answered, “for I was half afraid that
midshipmen would be excluded. When do we land, Ned?”
“I think in the evening, sir, so as to be ready for a start in the
morning. We can’t take no field-guns, more’s the pity, for they say
the country is a sight too hilly for anything but mountain guns.”
“How about the commissariat, ammunition, tents, and so forth?” I
asked; “we shall require transport animals of some kind.”
“I believe the Spanish Government is going to let us have a lot of
mules that are accustomed to that sort of work,” said my coxswain.
“Oh, we shall pig it out somehow, I dare say,” I exclaimed with a
laugh, “and it would be rather fun to rough it a bit.”
That evening we occupied the fort in force. The dead had been
buried at an early hour in the morning, and so there was little or no
trace of the struggle that had taken place so recently, except in the
fort itself, where the dismounted and spiked guns told their own tale.
In all we numbered one hundred officers and men, well supplied with
all that was necessary for a short campaign. At the time of my story,
machine-guns had not been invented, and that underhand weapon
of warfare, the torpedo, was unknown. A few of the former would
have been extremely serviceable to our brigade on this occasion; but
still we were extremely well armed in accordance with the ideas of
that day, each man being supplied with a breech-loading rifle, a
cutlass which could be used as a sword-bayonet if necessary, and a
revolver. An ammunition-pouch, a blanket, a water-bottle, and a pair
of leggings for each man completed the equipment, nothing being
showy, but everything extremely serviceable.
As before, Mr. Thompson was appointed to command the brigade,
as he had had a great deal of experience in shore-going expeditions
in a previous commission on the west coast of Africa. Two
lieutenants, the captain of marines, Dr. Grant, four sub-lieutenants,
the gunner, Fitzgerald, and myself made up the list of officers; and
about seventy picked blue-jackets and twenty marines composed the
rank-and-file. No commanding officer could have wished for finer
men. Not only was their physique splendid, but they were tried,
trustworthy fellows who had all seen service on previous occasions,
and could be relied on to do their duty in the direst emergency.
Tenacious bull-dogs! that’s what they were. It would be impossible
to describe them better in a couple of words.
CHAPTER VI.
“COLD PIG” AND “SLING THE MONKEY.”

I WAS effectually roused from my slumbers on the following


morning by the shrill bugle-calls which the drummer seemed to
take a delight in blowing as near the gunroom tent as possible. On
murderous thoughts intent, and clad in very scanty apparel,
Fitzgerald and I made a desperate sortie, one carrying a huge bath-
sponge saturated with water, and the other a well-knotted towel.
“What a lark!” exclaimed Fitzgerald, capering about with delight;
“cold pig for the drummer, and a lambasting afterwards to warm him
up and prevent any possibility of his catching cold whilst so far away
from his mammy’s protecting care!”
Dawn had scarcely broken, and it was almost dark outside the tent
and rather unpleasantly chilly. The bugle-calls had ceased, but we
thought we distinguished the drummer some yards away just upon
the point of raising his instrument of torture to his lips again.
“I’ll put a stopper on his little game,” said Fitzgerald hastily to me.
“Ready! present! fire!” and he hurled the heavy sponge with
admirable aim straight at the dusky little figure; whilst I darted
forward with a sort of Red Indian war-whoop, waving the knotted
towel over my head.
The sponge landed with a splosh full upon the head of the
individual it was intended for, and the latter staggered and gave a
shout of dismay and disgust as the highly-unpleasant projectile came
into contact with him.
“Good shot!” I cried exultingly. The next moment I recoiled in
horror, and Fitzgerald turned deadly pale, for we recognized in our
unlucky victim the short but sturdy Mr. Triggs, the gunner, who, being
a very early riser, had taken it into his head to emerge from his tent
and endeavour to make out the Rattler through a pair of night-
glasses. How would he take our explanation that we had mistaken
him for the drummer-boy tooting on a bugle?
Before we had time to think or apologize for our mistake, the
sponge was sent hurtling back through the air by the muscular arm
of Mr. Triggs. I was relieved to see that it was aimed at the real
delinquent, Fitzgerald, and not at me.
“O you mischievous middies!” shouted the gunner, running
towards us; “you’re always up to some tomfoolery or other!”
Fitzgerald saw the sponge flying towards him, and tried to dodge
it, but as ill luck would have it trod with his bare foot upon a sharp
stone. The pain was so great that it brought him to the ground; but in
trying to save himself he threw out his arms and they unfortunately
encountered me, and I felt myself seized in a grip which there was
no shaking off. In a moment we were both sprawling upon the
ground, arms and legs inextricably mixed up in a sort of “limb hotch-
potch.”
The gunner, chuckling with delight at our misadventure, now came
running up, his hair and face dripping from the effects of his lately-
inflicted “cold pig.”
“If I don’t pay you youngsters out, my name ain’t Timothy Triggs!”
he exclaimed; “and ’tis a grand opportunity I’ve got,” and so saying
he snatched the knotted towel out of my hand, and began
belabouring us both with it with remarkable muscular energy.
“Stop, stop, stop!” I yelled; “we mistook you for the drummer, and
are awfully sorry, Mr. Triggs!”
Whack, whack, whack! The blows fell with wonderful regularity and
with marvellous impartiality, first on Fitzgerald and then on me.
All this time the gunner was chuckling with suppressed laughter,
for he was thoroughly enjoying the joke, being at heart a most good-
natured man.
“You can just imagine you’re playing ‘sling the monkey,’” he
exclaimed; “’tis a right good game and no mistake!”
Fitzgerald and I, however, had by this time managed to
disentangle our arms and legs, and we were on our feet again in a
moment. We did not at all appreciate this novel kind of “sling the
monkey.”
“Is that the enemy coming over the hill?” I exclaimed in an alarmed
voice, and pointing away to the rising ground which, beyond the
confines of the fort, rose steep and dark against the primrose-tinted
sky.
Mr. Triggs promptly turned his head to look, and in an instant I had
snatched the towel from his hand.
“Cut and run, Fitz!” I cried; “I thought I’d gammon him,” and so
saying I fled precipitately in the direction of the gunroom tent, my
brother-middy hobbling after me as fast as his wounded foot would
allow.
Mr. Triggs, however, did not attempt to give chase, feeling, I
suppose, that his skylarking days—now that he was on the shady
side of fifty—were over. So the worthy warrant-officer contented
himself with keeping up a hot and strong running fire of anathemas
upon us as long as we remained in sight.
“The bath-sponge, Fitz, the bath-sponge!” I gasped out, as I ran
panting into the tent and flung myself upon the ground, which formed
the only flooring.
“By Jove! I forgot all about it,” said my hobbling messmate; “I hope
old Triggs won’t appropriate it.”
At that moment the real drummer-boy passed our tent whistling a
merry air.
I promptly stopped him.
“Do you mind seeing, like a good fellow, if there’s a bath-sponge
lying just over there by that tent?” I said.
“All right, sir, I’ll have a look,” answered the drummer-boy, good-
naturedly, and off he went.
In a minute or two he returned with it.
“Here you are, sir. Been playing Aunt Sally with it, I suppose?”
“No, Uncle Triggs,” I said laughingly. “You’ve had an awfully
narrow escape, bugler, only you don’t know it. I should strongly
advise you not to come near the gunroom tent in the early morning,
for Mr. Fitzgerald there always gets a violent attack of homicidal
mania about that time.”
An hour later the tents were struck and we had started on our
march up country to the tune of “Rule Britannia,” played with
tremendous energy by our fife-and-drum band.
Little did I anticipate what was before me—such adventures as
even in my wildest dreams had not occurred to my mind.
CHAPTER VII.
NED AND THE MULE-DRIVER.

W E had two sets of native auxiliaries. One consisted of a fine lot


of Spanish baggage-mules, strong hardy beasts, thoroughly
acclimatized, and remarkably sure-footed; and the other a little bevy
of guides, interpreters, and spies, without whose aid we could have
accomplished little or nothing, for we were entirely ignorant of the
country we were about to traverse, and our knowledge of Spanish
was confined to about a dozen words or so.
The spies, some of whom were negroes and the others half-
castes, assured us that they had tracked the mutineers for some
distance, and were well acquainted with the route they had taken,
which was a beaten track leading straight into the interior. These
swarthy fellows also asserted that a body of insurgents had
accompanied the lawless crew of the Flying-fish in their retreat. We
questioned them as to any knowledge they might have acquired with
regard to the whereabouts of the valuable cargo which it was the
object of our expedition to recover. About that they declared that they
knew nothing whatever, although they confessed to having heard
rumours that large bodies of men were passing and repassing
between the shores of the creek and the spurs of the inland hills
during the whole of the day before the Rattler’s arrival upon the
scene.
“’Tis a good thing we’ve no field-guns and limber-waggons with
us,” said Ned Burton to me as we marched along; “they’d have
delayed us terribly, and prevented our making forced marches.”
“You think we’ll soon come up with them then?” said I. “For my
own part I hope the fun won’t be over too soon. If we returned
victorious in a couple of days, the fellows left on board would be sure
to jeer at us, and say we had only gone for a sort of picnic into the
mountains.”
“Ah, ’twill take more than a couple of days even under the most
favourable circumstances,” answered Ned. “I take it these merchant-
service fellows haven’t got marching-legs, so to speak, and are
perhaps encumbered with wounded men, but still they’ve got a pretty
fair start, you see, and that ain’t a thing to be sneezed at.”
“The difficulty will be to find where they have hidden away the
booty,” I said; “no doubt the insurgents have put them up to a wrinkle
or two, knowing every inch of the country as they do.”
“Doesn’t the Rattler look jolly?” exclaimed an enthusiastic voice at
my elbow.
I turned and beheld Fitzgerald, who still had a slight limp as a
legacy from the morning’s fracas.
“Poor old ‘hop-and-go-one,’ what’s he trying to say?” I asked in a
jocose tone, and clapping him on the shoulder rather harder than
was altogether necessary.
“‘Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?’” demanded Fitzgerald,
tapping his sword-hilt with his left hand, and trying hard but very
unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“‘I do bite my thumb, sir,’” I answered promptly, and trying to put on
a swashbuckler air; “but I need not say that I should infinitely prefer
to bite yours or even Mr. Triggs’s.”
“Then old ‘hop-and-go-one’ and old ‘hop-o’-my thumb’ would be
sworn chums for ever and ever,” laughed Fitzgerald; “but at this
moment I don’t want to fall out with you, honour bright! I want you to
look back at that magnificent view, and the dear old Rattler in the
middle of it. I never saw a more lovely picture!”
Fitz was an artist of no mean capacity, and I strongly suspected
that he had at that moment a paint-box and brushes in his pocket.
Hand-cameras would have enchanted him, but they had not then
been invented.
It certainly was a lovely view, and I felt grateful to my brother-
middy for calling my attention to it.
We had been winding gradually along the summit of a low range of
hills, on the outermost spur of which was situated the fort we had just
evacuated. The gradient was upwards, though in no place steep,
and we had now reached a somewhat extensive plateau covered
with short springy sward. From this point of vantage we had a full
and extensive view of the winding tortuous creek; the hills, clad with
palm groves, which enclosed it; and the broad blue sea beyond,
glittering in the sunshine, and here and there barred with purple
cloud-shadows. For the primrose streaks of colour in the sky had
melted away as if by magic, and the glorious sun had recalled a
sleeping world to life. In the roadstead our beautiful frigate lay calmly
and serenely at anchor, her guns frowning from the portholes, and
her shapely hull and taut spars and rigging reflected with
extraordinary fidelity in the waters which appeared to sleep in the
warm rays of the sun. Astern lay the Flying-fish, which, though a
well-built vessel, lacked the trim appearance and impressiveness of
the British man-of-war. Above, the blue vault of heaven stretched
away into limitless infinity, its tint of deepest azure only broken here
and there by a few sluggishly-moving clouds and the white wings of
innumerable sea-gulls.
As we gazed admiringly at our floating home we saw the proud
white ensign slowly ascend to her gaff, drooping listlessly in the
stagnant air; and the distant strains of “God save the Queen” came
faintly to our ears through the still, clear atmosphere of a Cuban
early morning.
“Eight bells!” I cried. “If we were on board the old hooker, Fitz, we
should be just sitting down to eat salt-junk and swill gunroom catlap.”
“Instead of which we’re out upon the war-path,” said Fitzgerald,
“and, like Fenimore Cooper’s Indian braves, are dying to scalp the
enemy.”
A halt was called just at this moment on account of a stampede
amongst some of the baggage-mules.
The gunnery lieutenant, who was very anxious to push on and find
traces of the enemy, was exceedingly angry at this unlooked-for
delay.
“Mr. Darcy,” he sang out to me, “ascertain at once the cause of
that stampede among the mules; and if it was due in any way to the
cruelty of the Spanish drivers, have the delinquents brought before
me, and I’ll give them a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry.”
I touched my cap and ran off to the rear to make inquiries,
expecting endless difficulties in having to conduct an investigation
with native mule-drivers who were most probably as ignorant of the
English language as I was of Spanish.
Meanwhile about a dozen of the mules were careering about wildly
in the neighbouring ravines, pursued by their shouting and
screaming owners. Some of the frightened animals had already rid
themselves of their burdens, and the ground was strewn with bags of
biscuit, preserved provisions, and cases of ammunition.
The worthy Mr. Triggs proved to be a friend in need to me, for on
reaching the spot where the main body of the baggage-animals was
collected, I found him firmly holding a swarthy Cuban by the scruff of
the neck and administering to another portion of his body some
hearty kicks.
“This is the rascal that caused all the mischief with the mules, Mr.
Darcy,” he exclaimed in rather breathless tones as I ran up. “The
cruel brute broke several sticks over the back of a poor mule that
had gone dead lame, and the wretched animal was in such pain and
so frightened that it broke away, and seems to have infected a lot of
the others with its terror.”
I promptly seized the culprit by one arm.
“You come along with me,” I said; “our chief is going to have you
tried by a drumhead court-martial, and perhaps shot, according to
the regulations of war.”
I do not know if the wretch understood what I was saying, but he
commenced to struggle and shout defiantly in his native tongue.
Mr. Triggs, however, seized him by the other arm in an iron grip,
and, in spite of his writhings and kickings, we hurried him forward to
the spot where the gunnery lieutenant was standing awaiting events.
The gunner related to his superior in a few words how he had
caught the culprit in the very act of brutally ill-treating a helpless
lame mule.
“Is there an interpreter there?” demanded Mr. Thompson.
A respectable-looking elderly Spaniard stepped forward and took
off his sombrero with a sweeping bow.
“Be good enough to tell this fellow that he is a heartless cowardly
brute,” said the lieutenant sternly, and pointing to the still defiant-
looking mule-driver; “ask him what he means by such conduct.”
The Spaniard interpreted the officer’s words, but the culprit
obstinately and sullenly refused to answer a word.
“Where is the stick with which he belaboured the poor mule?”
demanded the gunnery lieutenant.
“Here it is, sir,” said Ned Burton, coming up at that moment with a
long, business-like cane in his hand.
“We’ll now give him a taste of what the poor mule felt,” said the
lieutenant. “A couple of you smart blue-jackets tie the fellow up to
that stump of a tree.”
The culprit resisted with all his strength, and attempted to bite,
scratch, and kick; but the two brawny seamen made short work of
his struggles, and soon had him securely lashed to the tree.
“One dozen,” said Mr. Thompson, nodding to Ned Burton
significantly.
My coxswain touched his cap, grinned, and rolled up his sleeve in
a workmanlike manner.
“Trust me to polish him off!” I heard him mutter to himself; “I can’t
abide them furriners that wreaks their bad temper on dumb animals
that can’t ’it you back agin—smother me if I can!”
As soon as the fellow’s flogging was over, he was turned out of the
camp and told that his services were no longer required. Then, the
scattered mules having been secured again, we once more set out
on our march towards the interior.
The sun had now attained to a considerable altitude in the
heavens, and as there was an absence of wind, even upon the
heights, the heat and glare became intense. Not a single grumble
was heard, however, the men being much too gay and light-hearted
to care whether they were baked like salamanders or not. Our spirits
were kept up by the novelty and excitement of active service on
shore and the assurances of the guides that ere long we should
reach the outskirts of a forest, which it would be necessary to
traverse, and where plenty of shade would shield us from the sun’s
overpowering rays.
“Give me old Father Sol and an open country,” observed Ned
Burton to me, “in preference to jungle and the shade of trees. I’d
sooner chance a sunstroke than the ambush of a skulking enemy!”
“You think they may lie in wait for us,” I said. “If they do we shall
give them a drubbing.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” said my coxswain. “These Cubans, I
believe, are as wily as sarpents; and as to drubbing them and their
mutinous pals, it’s just a question of whether they’ve the sperrit to
meet us in the open or not. If they have, well, we shall just eat ’em
up. Trust the Rattler boys for an out-and-out shindy, Mr. Darcy.”
I was on the point of replying to my coxswain, when my attention
was entirely absorbed by the sudden apparition of a large and
compact cloud of horsemen emerging from behind some steep
scarped rocks immediately in front, and some four or five hundred
yards distant from the head of our column. They appeared to be
about to charge us.
“Cavalry, as I’m a living sinner!” exclaimed Ned, slipping a
cartridge into his rifle. “I’m jiggered if that don’t beat everything!”
It was certainly strange to find that the enemy had already secured
some mounted allies. It looked as if we should find this expedition no
child’s play—in fact, a great deal more like catching a Tartar.
“Prepare for cavalry!” thundered the gunnery lieutenant. “Keep
steady, men, and we’ll soon send them to the right about.”
The horsemen were evidently provided with carbines, for as they
wheeled up into position they fired a wild volley at us, and then
dashed forward at full gallop straight in our direction.
CHAPTER VIII.
“PREPARE FOR CAVALRY!”

T HE Rattler’s officers had reason to be proud of their little brigade


of seamen and marines. In this sudden emergency they were
calm, cool, and self-reliant. Their discipline and the celerity of their
movements were beyond praise. It was a severe test, and they came
out of it with flying colours.
As the enemy’s irregular cavalry came thundering down towards
us over the broken ground, we formed square, and, with loaded rifles
and fixed bayonets, stood ready to receive them. There was no time
to get the baggage-animals and native drivers into the centre of the
square, and so they were forced to remain huddled together in the
rear—a squad of marines being told off to guard them to the best of
their ability.
The horsemen seemed nothing daunted by our steadiness and
military formation, but swept on at a gallop. Two of their steeds,
however, stumbled badly on the rough ground and threw their riders,
after which they rushed away in the direction from which they had
come like mad creatures.
I was all excitement at the idea of this unexpected brush with the
enemy, and drew my loaded revolver from my belt. Ned Burton was
standing up just in front of me in the square, looking the essence of
determination and tenacious valour. The outer ranks were kneeling.
The rays of the tropical sun flashed on the serried lines of bayonets
and glinted on the less polished rifle barrels.
On came the cavalry with desperate bravery. Even on that rocky
ground they raised a cloud of dust. The horsemen had slung their
carbines and drawn their sabres, the blades of which flashed
ominously over their heads like the gleams of sheet lightning.
“Give the swabs a volley,” muttered Ned Burton, “and we’ll empty
some of their saddles for ’em.”
At that very moment the order to fire was given.
Little tongues of flame and puffs of grey smoke darted from the
muzzles of the rifles defending one side of the square, and the crash
of a volley of musketry rang out into the air with almost deafening
effect. Amid it all I seemed to hear distinctly the thunder of the
chargers’ hoofs.
“Give them another volley!” shouted the gunnery lieutenant; and
darting about, hither and thither, amid the blinding, choking smoke,
we juniors repeated his order.
It was too late.
They were dashing horsemen these irregular cavaliers of the
enemy, for our steady, well-directed fire did not check them or smash
up their formation as we had expected. Though many of their
saddles had been emptied, a cheer of defiance arose from their
ranks as they dashed on into the curtain of smoke which enveloped
us, and which the sluggish air seemed powerless to disperse. When
they were almost upon us, their wings wheeled to right and left and
hurled themselves upon the two side faces of the square, while the
centre squadron dashed in upon the ranks where Ned Burton and I
were standing awaiting the onset.
“No more cartridges; it’s steel to steel!” said my coxswain grimly,
as he gripped his rifle firmly and prepared for the shock.
In another moment it came. Through the slowly-dispersing
vaporous smoke I saw the towering forms of the snorting chargers
and the fierce-looking, swarthy faces of their riders. Shouts of
defiance and rage arose on all sides, together with the angry clash of
steel as sabre and bayonet contended for the mastery, though these
sounds were almost drowned in the sharp stinging reports of the
revolvers brought into use at close quarters by the officers.
One naturally hesitates to speak of one’s own acts on an occasion
of this sort for fear of being thought egotistical; but being bound to
describe what actually occurred, I cannot avoid stating that I saved
my coxswain’s life on the occasion of this cavalry charge, and I am
very thankful that I had it in my power to do him that service.
It was a simple matter. Just at the point where Ned was standing
and forming part of the hedge of steel, the full brunt of the cavalry
charge seemed to fall, and for a few seconds I really almost feared
that the face of the square would be driven in. Certainly there was a
little disorder for a moment, and a swaying motion in the ranks which
told its own tale. However, it was only for a moment; for it is just at
these critical times that the tenacity of the British bull-dog comes into
play.
Amidst the hurly-burly of the mêlée I caught sight of Ned Burton
hard pressed by two horsemen. He seemed to have been brought to
his knees almost under the hoofs of one of the horses, while the two
horsemen were bending forward in their saddles and aiming terrific
blows at his head with their sabres. Ned was endeavouring to the
best of his ability to protect himself, but there was no doubt that he
was in great jeopardy.
My revolver was fortunately still loaded with three cartridges, and I
immediately took steady aim at the horseman nearest to Ned. No
bullet ever went truer, for it pierced the man’s heart, and he fell from
the saddle without even a groan and lay dead at my coxswain’s feet.
His steed, recognizing that there was no longer a restraining hand on
the bridle, took to his heels, and, with distended nostrils and wildly
tossed mane, galloped away from the battle-field.
Almost at the moment that I had accomplished this feat, the
charger of the other horseman was shot dead by one of our seamen,
and his rider was thrown to the ground with some violence. I instantly
rushed forward, seized the man, and demanded his surrender. Not
liking the look of my revolver, the barrel of which was within a couple
of inches of his temples, the fellow sullenly acquiesced, and I had
him disarmed and sent into the square under an escort. Ned had
nearly been crushed by the falling horse, but had fortunately
escaped with a few bruises.
The square remained unbroken. On three of its faces the
squadrons of horsemen had dashed like little whirlwinds, but in no
case had an entrance been forced. A fierce hand-to-hand struggle
had taken place for a few moments, but on every side our men were
triumphant. The cavalry charge was fairly repulsed, and as the
horsemen beat a hasty retreat they were terribly harassed by the
withering fire of our riflemen. We had not gone unscathed, however,
for one of our sub-lieutenants and a marine had been killed, and we
had one man seriously and three slightly wounded. In the volley from
their carbines the enemy had wasted their ammunition sadly, for not
a single shot took effect, all the casualties having occurred during
the hand-to-hand struggle. The enemy, we found, had suffered
severely, having lost eleven men killed outright and seven horses,
whilst we found upon the field eighteen wounded men, of whom five
or six were mortally injured. We had also secured half a dozen
prisoners, all of whom were Cuban insurgents. Needless to say, we
questioned these fellows closely; but they obstinately kept their lips
sealed and would divulge no secrets, though we tried to impress
upon them how foolish they were to league themselves with such
disreputable scoundrels as the mutineers of the Flying-fish.
The spot where this skirmish took place was not more than four
miles distant from the creek where we had landed, although any
view of the latter was shut out by an intervening ridge. We could see
the distant blue ocean stretching away to the horizon line, and dotted
here and there with the sails of passing vessels, but the Rattler and
the Flying-fish were invisible.
We at once told off a party to convey the wounded back to the
shores of the creek, that they might be taken on board the frigate as
quickly as possible. Mr. Triggs was placed in charge of this
detachment, which included the prisoners, and had orders to rejoin
the main body as expeditiously as he could, so that there might be
no delay.
A fatigue party was also told off to bury the dead—a mournful duty
which brings forcibly to one’s mind the horrors of warring with one’s
fellow-creatures.
Fitzgerald and I felt this most acutely, for we had lost a very dear
messmate, and it was part of our sad task to assist to lay him in his
narrow grave in this foreign land far from his home and kindred.
“It will break his mother’s heart,” said a mournful voice near us, as
we began to fill up the poor fellow’s last resting-place with the sand
which we had dug out.
I turned and saw that it was Dr. Grant who had spoken.
“You know her?” I said interrogatively.
The surgeon nodded assent. Then he quoted,—

“We laid him in the sleep that comes to all,


And left him to his rest and his renown.”

You might also like