This book offers the first framing of potential sociological approaches to the compelling and yet hugely under–researched topic of food waste. In recent years, social scientists have begun to conceptualise waste as a dynamic category and one that plays an important role in processes of cultural and economic organisation. As such, the profile of waste has suddenly increased as a topic of sociological relevance and the papers in this collection extend these developments to analyses of food. Bringing together theoretical and empirical contributions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, this compilation engages with food waste in number of contexts and at a variety of scales. Amongst other things, the individual papers explore: the regulation and governance of food systems; the materiality of foodstuffs and associated technologies; the dynamics of social practices and what goes on in domestic kitchens; the entanglements and arrangements that shape how things are valued; the ways in which food and waste are circulated in societies; dumpster diving and freeganism, and socio–technical innovations for waste reduction. Taken together, these contributions highlight the various ways in which social science can inform an issue that is currently riding high on public and policy agendas. Additionally, this book demonstrates that food waste is a useful lens through which to tend to a number of contemporary issues in sociology and social theory.