Cutting food waste – through social media

| July 14, 2020

Australians who have been economically impacted by COVID-19 are doing it tough. The bills keep coming in and the family still needs to be fed. Yet the average Australian family continues to waste around $3,000 per year on food that isn’t being eaten, often due to a simple lack of awareness.

The Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) will kick off a new social media campaign to provide Australians with much needed messages, tips and tricks on how to save money by reducing their food waste.

John Webster, Chair of the Fight Food Waste CRC said that it is more important than ever to reduce food waste and through this social media campaign, we’ll be reaching as many people as we can over the next three months to help them with ideas to make the most of the food they buy.

“We want everyone to know that this is an important issue, that here in Australia there are 7.3 million tonnes of food wasted each year. That is enough to fill semi-trailers that would stretch from Perth to Sydney.

“But first and foremost, the campaign is about putting money back in the pockets of those that are doing it tough and through this campaign, we want them to know it’s easy as to fight food waste.

“Our fantastic participants here at the CRC have already developed many resources to help everyone, so we’ve brought them together in a new content hub so you can find what you need no matter where you are around the country.

“You could join the ‘loving a list’ challenge from Sustainability Victoria, or find resources from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, both are on our content hub.

“The ACT Government will shortly be launching a food waste campaign and the South Australian Government provides advice to householders on waste and recycling through the Which Bin campaign, and East Waste have the Why waste it? campaign to help get food waste out of landfill.

“We’ve also have easy recipes from the UK’s Love Food Hate Waste program, as well as Food Saver tips from Woolworths and storage ideas from our food charity partners.

“Our national survey late last year of over 5,000 Australian households told us that 76% of the population were motivated to reduce food waste, yet there are still many concerns and confusion around food safety and date labels, so we’ve made sure to include information about that so that we can all be confident in our decisions to provide the best food for our families.”

The Hon Karen Andrews, Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, said that there are enormous opportunities to reduce food waste for Australia and this initiative is a terrific example of how we can make it real for Aussie households.

“This campaign draws on industry-led research collaboration to make a real difference for Australians at a time when many have been struggling through the COVID-19 crisis.

“It also builds on the Morrison Government’s commitment to a billion-dollar transformation of Australia’s waste and recycling capacity, which will create 10,000 jobs over the next decade and divert 10 million tonnes of waste from landfill into the making of useful products.”

The ‘It’s easy as’ to fight food waste campaign will launch on Facebook and Instagram on 13 July 2020 on the Fight Food Waste Australia pages on both Facebook and Instagram, and on an new content hub.

The Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre launched in July 2018, and brings together industry, research and the community to capitalise on Australia’s food waste opportunities. Winning this fight can save Australia $20 billion per annum in wasted food.

Through its three research and development programs, the Fight Food Waste CRC will REDUCE food waste throughout the supply chain, TRANSFORM unavoidable waste into innovative products, and ENGAGE with industry and consumers to deliver behavioural change.

The Fight Food Waste CRC is funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources as part of the CRC Program that supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community.

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