The Wastebusters research group operates in the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University. Our group consists of researchers in the fields of marketing, consumer research, business management and sociology.
We publish research in business and social science journals and contribute to the societal debate on the circular economy and sustainability. Our current and previous research projects have focused, for example, on the reduction of food waste, sustainable fashion, and plastics. The projects are listed on the Projects page.
Examples of applied theoretical foci: Practice theoretical consumer research, perspectives of strategic marketing and management, theories of materiality, and sociocultural view to circular economy.
Our research group collaborates with a wide range of partners within Tampere University:
- Research Centre for Managing Circular Economy ManCE at MAB faculty
- Customer Oriented Marketing Research Group at MAB faculty
- Center for Innovation and Technology Research (CITER) at MAB faculty
- Professor Olli Pyyhtinen’s research group (WasteMatters and DECAY projects) at SOC faculty.
Key research topics
- circular economy, circular consumption, circular transition, circular economy experience
- consumption practices, consumer collectives, anti-consumption in circular economy
- circular startups, market actors in the circular economy
- devices and materials in the circular economy
- degrowth and sufficiency
- food waste
- sustainable fashion, circular fashion
- plastics
History
The Wastebusters Research Group was established in 2015 when the Emil Aaltonen Foundation granted the group a project grant to study consumer-citizens as active reducers of food waste. At that time, food waste was an emerging research topic, which allowed us to combine various theoretical and methodological expertise with a societally relevant, wicked sustainability challenge. This project grant enabled us to generate multiple datasets and to initiate fruitful collaboration with various stakeholders at local and national level. In addition, the project’s results were published in internationally recognized journals. In 2020, we published an edited volume “Food Waste Management: Solving the Wicked Problem” based on the framework of the research project. Since then, Wastebusters has grown both in terms of people and funding, and we have broadened our focus from food waste to other sustainable circular economy contexts and challenges.
At the core of our group is research-based solution orientation. Our strengths are in qualitative methodologies and interpretive approaches, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and acquisition of competitive external funding – all this with a community-driven ethos. Our shared passion is to make the world a better place through research and act as active change agents in a sustainable circular economy.
