Shots fired in Australia’s war on food waste

late April, with the unemployed, single mothers, and students among those who leave with bulging bags of groceries.

Tip of the waste iceberg

What we eat or throw away is just the tip of the iceberg in the production process, conservation experts say, with huge amounts of resources such as fertilisers, fuel, land and water used to grow and package food.

“When food’s wasted, and all of those resources are wasted as well, what’s incumbent upon us is to make the most of the food that we produce in those instances, rather than producing more and more,” said Marcus Godinho of charity FareShare.

FareShare tackles waste by cooking large quantities of food that farmers and manufacturers to expire, in a 500-square-metre ( 5,400- square- foot) kitchen in Melbourne before freezing and storing it for distribution to the disadvantaged at a later date.

Also reducing waste at a wholesale level is Yume, an online platform connecting suppliers and buyers for hard-to-sell surplus pro

“It (the unwanted food) can be cancelled orders, it can be mislabelled, it can be brand refresh, it can be export orders that get that are not what the retailers told AFP.

up food rescue charity SecondBite, wants to take the platform global as she develops it to handle millions of transactions.

“Because it’s a piece of technology, there are no barriers to scaling it,” she said.

With Canberra stepping into the fray, waste warriors are optimistic that incentives including tax breaks could reduce excess in supply chains and encourage businesses to keep surplus food

Even public institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons could make their procurement of food more sustainable by buying surplus products through platforms like Yume, Barfield added.

“It would save food going to waste, it would be good for the environment, it would be very good for the taxpayers’ pockets because we would be paying less for the food, and I think it’s a win, win, win,” she said.