Australia wastes $20 billion worth of food each year but plans have been revealed to reduce the scraps by half.
Federal environment minister Josh Frydenberg has announced $1.37 million for Food Innovation Australia, an agency focused on reducing food waste by getting industry and business to commit to the target by 2030.
“Twenty per cent of everything we consume, we waste,” Frydenberg told reporters at a National Food Waste Summit in Melbourne on Monday.
“This costs the Australian economy about $20 billion a year and about four million tonnes of food ends up in landfill.”
That waste produces more than 700 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, the minister added.
“If food waste was a country, when it comes to producing carbon dioxide emissions, it would be the third-biggest in the world behind China and the United States,” he said
The government will develop a food waste baseline to keep the plan on track, Frydenberg said.
Food Innovation Australia will finalise by late 2018 its plan to halve waste, with the voluntary commitment program for businesses and industry to begin in early 2019.
Woolworths pledged its support to the government’s food waste strategy.
The supermarket giant was involved in the advisory group consulted as part of the development of the strategy.
Woolworths has a long-standing public commitment to work towards zero food waste to landfill, with a range of programs already underway and others in development across the Woolworths Food Group. This includes The Odd Bunch, which was highlighted by the Minister during his address at the Summit.
“Woolworths has made great strides in reducing our food waste to landfill and we recognise that there is still much more that we need to do,” said drian Cullen, head of sustainability, Woolworths Food Group.
“Currently, 91 per cent of stores have a food waste diversion program that successfully diverts 60,500 tonnes of food each year.
“The National Food Waste Strategy sets a very ambitious target of a 50 per cent reduction by 2030, though Woolworths is committed to helping meet and exceed this target via our own activities and supporting our customers in playing their part.”
