Waste Not, Advocating Against Food Waste

 For my final project, I made a website titled “Waste Not”. My website was dedicated to the advocating against food waste. Communicating in support of a cause, policy, idea, or set of values is advocacy. (Pezzulo and Cox 203) There are multiple modes of advocacy but the one used in my project is public education. Public education is a mode of advocacy that aims to influence social attitudes and behavior. (Pezzulo and Cox 205) The goal of my website was to spread awareness of what food waste is and how it impacts the environment as well as to encourage people to be more conscious of their consumption habits. To complete this goal, I took on the objectives of alerting and amplifying. 

To alert means pointing out and naming something in the world. (Pezzulo and Cox 233) A significant impact of digital media on the public sphere is its ability to identify environmental concerns and issues and alert people of them. My way of alerting the public is through my website. My website does this by being publicly available and easily shareable digital information that is comprehensible to the everyday person. The website explains what food waste is, why it is harmful, and ways to combat it. I made sure to include a link to a Pinterest page that is an extension of my website. This page has boards holding tips, tricks, and printables that further dive into the ways to combat food waste given on my website. 

The second objective, amplification, serves the purpose of increasing the number of people who are exposed to your message. (Pezzulo and Cox 233)  I used two different methods to amplify my website. The first way was by printing out little images of anthropomorphic produce mascots with a QR code that lead to my website and placing them in various spots around campus.

The intention was that the little characters would pique people's curiosity which would make them follow the QR code to my website. The second way was by sharing a link to my website on social media and by having people I know share it with as many people as possible. 

I chose this topic because a lot of environmental issues feel so big for people to take on I liked the idea of being able to spread awareness of an issue that people can take on during their everyday lives. Combating food waste also has the added benefit of helping people save money and extend meals. I also think that by normalizing environmental consciousness within our everyday lives helps to make a more environmentally motivated society. 

The issues I faced while doing this project were mostly technical. I originally wanted to make a website with a forum-like page where people could share how they practice combatting food waste. This was my first time ever making a website so I relied on web design websites and was therefore bound by the constraints of what these websites had available to me. Other than this another difficulty I faced was my own lack of tech-savviness and figuring out how to put the site together while overcoming my own difficulty.


Link to website: https://wastenot3.godaddysites.com/


Citation:

Pezzullo, Phaedra C, and J Robert Cox. Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere

5th ed., Thousand Oaks, California, Sage, 2018.

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