The Global Picture

The world’s population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, there will be nearly 5 million new mouths to feed each month. With limited resources like land and water, one of the biggest challenges of this century is how we provide better food to more people.

Today, Australia holds the title of fourth highest food waster in the world. We need a call to action across governments, industry, retailers, and consumers to radically drive change. It’s up to all of us to act now and work together against this crisis.

What’s the cost?

Our Food Waste report shows that Aussies are wasting 13 per cent of their weekly grocery shop, costing the average Australian household $1,026 a year. Throwing away scraps and food that’s gone off here and there might seem harmless, however it’s hurting your back pocket as well as our planet. Food waste going into landfill decomposes anaerobically producing methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

We need to change our daily food waste habits, and luckily that’s easy enough. Read on to find out how you can make a difference.

How you can make a difference

We don’t need to give up the things we like, dinner out with mates or take away on Friday night. We just need to plan for these things to avoid purchasing more than we need at the supermarket.

Here’s some simple things you can do today to make a big change for everyone’s tomorrow:

1. Plan your meals for the week, including when you’ll be eating out or ordering take away.
2. Always shop with a list to ensure you don’t buy things you don’t need.
3. Grow your own, it's surprisingly easy to do from scraps.
4. Get creative with imperfect fruit and veggies, like Austchilli who turn avocados with skin markings that supermarkets won’t take, into a yummy spread.
5. Quick pickling vegetables is a great way to make use of produce that is getting over ripe and also to make use of the ends (offcuts).

Stop wasting our planet!

If you’re not yet a food waste reduction advocate, here’s four more reasons to convert today:

1. If food waste were a country it would be the 3rd largest greenhouse gas emitter.
2. It takes 250km3 (that’s cubic kilometres) of water to grow just the food that is being wasted, that’s 500 times the capacity of Sydney Harbour every year.
3. Six soccer fields are deforested every minute to grow food that is being put in the bin.
4. This rate of land clearance is putting 28,000 animal species at risk of extinction within the next 25 years.

Knowing what effect food waste is having on our planet, we need to come together as a community to make a big change. What changes will YOU make?