Ku-ring-gai Council, Better Business Partnerships

The good news is, we grow enough food in Australia to feed our population three times over.

The not so good news, is that we waste 7.6 million tonnes of food annually, and ~70% of this could have been eaten. This hurts our economy too, food waste costs Australia $36.6 Billion, per year.

For food businesses, a third of their waste is food, and it is estimated that food waste costs the average aged care facility $1,000 a week.

There is huge, and exciting opportunity to change this.

Following the circular economy principles, we need to do the strategic work to reduce food waste by ordering, planning, preparing, serving and storing correctly, and ensuring edible food is eaten.

And it can be done.

Enter BC’s latest project, working for Amanda Choy at the Better Business Partnership (BBP) in Sydney. Having a long standing relationship with small to medium businesses, the BBP has recently been awarded funding from the NSW EPA to help ~300 reduce food waste, and introduce organics collection services.

It’s pretty exciting to work on a project that focuses on identifying food waste prevention opportunities for plate, prep and stock food waste, thanks to Amanda’ leadership and determination.

As the first pilot participant, Karl Riseborough of Flat Rock Café has already measured the preparation and plate food waste, and consistently noticed chips being left on customers’ plates and binned. By simply reducing these, by a small amount per serving, he’s reducing unnecessary waste.

Small changes, to many plates, add up!

Karl pays for his landfill bin to be collected weekly, at a cost. If this can be reduced, the collections can be reduced.

So who's in? Who's up for reducing their impact on the environment, in a meaningful and material way, saving some money, and showing leadership?