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Feminised concern or feminist care? Reclaiming gender normativities in zero waste living
rise to calls for sustainable consumption across the globe. In this article, we focus on the zero
waste lifestyle movement, which targets high-consumption households in the Global North as a
site of change for phasing out waste in global supply chains. Our article is concerned with asking
how gender and household sustainability are mutually constituted in the zero waste lifestyle
movement. We establish an analytical tension between understanding zero waste living as a
further intensification of feminised responsibility for people and the planet and as offering potential
for transformational change – as feminised concern or feminist care. Through qualitative content<...Show more Growing awareness of environmental issues and their relation to consumption patterns has given
rise to calls for sustainable consumption across the globe. In this article, we focus on the zero
waste lifestyle movement, which targets high-consumption households in the Global North as a
site of change for phasing out waste in global supply chains. Our article is concerned with asking
how gender and household sustainability are mutually constituted in the zero waste lifestyle
movement. We establish an analytical tension between understanding zero waste living as a
further intensification of feminised responsibility for people and the planet and as offering potential
for transformational change – as feminised concern or feminist care. Through qualitative content
analysis of the 10 most influential zero waste blogs globally, we show how the five zero waste
rules of conduct – refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot – guide consumers towards everyday
and situated engagements with waste. Organised by three cross-cutting themes – communing
with nature, organising time, and spending money – we present the normativities these rules call
into being for reconfiguring domestic activities such as cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping. In
the discussion, we draw out the implications of zero waste living’s emerging, contradictory gender
normativities, while recalling the political economy in which it is situated, namely a neoliberal,
postfeminist landscape. We identify a continued feminisation of domestic responsibilities that is
uncontested in zero waste living but also explore the progressive potential of waste-free living
to bring collective, naturecultural worlds into being as part of domestic environmental labour.
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- All authors
- Wilde, M. de; Parry, S.
- Date
- 2022
- Journal
- the sociological review
- Volume
- 70
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 526 - 546