Self-regulation is dead, long live self-regulation! Regulatory hybridity and food waste

Through the lens of regulatory hybridity and intermediaries, this paper exposes the reality of a much-welcomed ‘legislative turn’ in preventing food waste. Using the UK retail supply chain as a case study, it provides a comprehensive overview of the ‘direct and tangential’ hybridity already in place to tackle food waste, and the forthcoming regulatory additions. This comprises voluntary agreements to tackle food waste (the Courtauld Commitments); legally binding self-regulation to tackle unfairness in the supply chain (GSCOP, the Groceries Supply Code of Practice, which has tangential relevance to food waste); unused regulatory powers to implement a new fair dealing regime; and forthcoming mandatory food waste reporting for large businesses. This regulatory hybridity is ‘enforced’ by quasi-regulators or regulatory intermediaries: a government-funded NGO to whom the administration of the voluntary approach has been outsourced (WRAP), and a ‘Janus-faced’ arbitrator-cum-regulator established to enforce GSCOP and encourage compliance with it (the Groceries Code Adjudicator). A close contextual and doctrinal analysis demonstrates a limited departure (if any) from the largely voluntary paradigm that government itself has acknowledged to be inadequate. Arguing that ‘Self-regulation is dead, long live self-regulation!’, the paper concludes by suggesting that the (cynical?) shift to regularity hybridity, rather than representing an increased willingness to address the urgent problem of food waste, represents an enduring reluctance to dismantle vested and powerful economic interests in an environmentally harmful and fundamentally exploitative status quo. With the UK seen as a leader in tackling food waste, and with other jurisdictions potentially following a similar path, the paper offers an illustrative but cautionary exploration of global regulatory trends.