New research by the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre (FFW CRC) shows beef, bread, cheese and salad are the most wasted foods out in Australian kitchens.
Almost half of all fruit and vegetables produced are wasted (that's 3.7 trillion apples). Throwing away one burger wastes the same amount of water as a 90-minute shower. It takes 25 years for a head of lettuce to decompose in landfill. Source: Wasted!
Each year we waste around 7.6 million tonnes of food across the supply and consumption chain – this wastage equals about 312kg per person, equivalent to around one in five bags of groceries or $2,000 to $2,500 per household per year.
Food is lost or wasted for a variety of reasons: bad weather, processing problems, overproduction and unstable markets cause food loss long before it arrives in a grocery store, while overbuying, poor planning and confusion over labels and safety contribute to food waste at stores and in homes.
There are many reasons why we tend to waste so much perfectly good food. One of the most common reasons is that Australian households cook too much food and do not know how to use leftovers. We also throw food out by mistake before the use-by date, or forget about food in the fridge until they have expired.
1. Chicken parmigiana. This classic Aussie chicken dish – with roots in Italian-American cooking – is a staple offering at many pub menus in the country. Whether you call it a parmi/parmy or a parma (but never a parmo), there's huge debate about where does the best parmigiana in Australia.
Construction and demolition waste is the largest source of waste in Australia. Construction creates 16.8% of total waste annually. The construction industry produces the second largest amount of waste by industry behind manufacturing. Construction creates 87 tonnes of waste per million dollars added to the economy.
The major components are food waste, paper, plastic, rags, metal and glass, although demolition and construction debris is often included in collected waste, as are small quantities of hazardous waste, such as electric light bulbs, batteries, automotive parts and discarded medicines and chemicals.
The main takeaway this month is that there are two main types of food waste – preventable and non-edible. Non-edible food waste is unavoidable…it's the banana peels and meat bones. The Love Food, Fight Waste program is working hard to reduce the preventable food waste.
Woolworths' latest corporate social responsibility figures show between 2008 and 2015 it decreased its total waste to landfill, which includes all materials, by 25 per cent to 96,000 tonnes, and increased food waste diverted from landfill by 815 per cent to 60,000 tonnes.
Australian households waste 2.5 million tonnes of food each year, or more than 4kg per household per week. Organic material makes up about 50% of a what is in the average household wheelie bin. By the end of the decade, Australia has a national target to halve food waste.
Many different types of waste are generated, including municipal solid waste, hazardous waste, industrial non-hazardous waste, agricultural and animal waste, medical waste, radioactive waste, construction and demolition debris, extraction and mining waste, oil and gas production waste, fossil fuel combustion waste, and ...
EPA refers to trash, or MSW, as various items consumers throw away after they are used. These items include bottles and corrugated boxes, food, grass clippings, sofas, computers, tires and refrigerators.
