Food Wise Campaign

Thanks to Daisy for sending me the following about the Food Wise campaign - it's so good to see such a ground swell of community support and awareness about food issues. Particularly that hording food until it goes off is frankly unethical. (I'm not blameless here by the way - but I'm working on it..)

Do Something recently launched their Food Wise campaign. The campaign aims to reduce the amount of food waste Australians produce. They throw some pretty juicy facts and figures at us to support their campaign, the most alarming being that Australians throw away close to 3 million tonnes of food waste per annum. This is 145 kilos per person per annum. Others include:

· It has been estimated that Australians discard up to 20% of the food they purchase, the equivalent of buying five bags of groceries and throwing one away.

· By conservative estimates, Australians threw away about $5.3 billion worth of food in 2004. This comprised $2.9 billion in fresh food; $630 million of uneaten takeaway; $876 million of leftovers; $596 million of unfinished drinks; $241 million of frozen foods, as cited in the 2005 report by The Australia Institute Wasteful Consumption.

· Studies in metropolitan Sydney showed that the average household bin contains 11kg of garbage, with 5.8 kgs of that compostable waste. 95% of this compostable matter was food waste.

· The decomposition of organic matter such as food waste in landfill is a major contributor to the generation of the highly damaging greenhouse gas methane. Methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 in its impacts on climate change (From Sustainability Victoria, Organic Waste Facts and Stats). In 2006, landfill produced 13.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the form of methane.

· Water is used intensively in growing and processing food. According to CSIRO data, dumping a kilo of beef wastes the 50,000 litres of water it took to produce that meat. Throwing out a kilo of white rice will waste 2,385 litres. Wasting a kilo of potatoes costs 500 litres.

· Tens of millions of kilograms of safe and edible fresh food and groceries are discarded every year, for reasons such as changed labelling regulations, end of season excess stock, production line changeover items, out-dated packaging, discontinued product, as well as slight label or weight inaccuracies which render the food legally unsaleable.

· Hundreds of millions of people around the world go to bed hungry or are starving for the most basic of foods. In Australia one million children go to school without breakfast or bed without dinner every day and two million people rely on food relief in Australia at some point every year.

How much food waste do you produce each week?

If you’d like to reduce the amount of food you waste, save yourself some cash and reduce your environmental impact, and I certainly encourage you to do so, take a look through the Foodwise website for great tips, recipes and opinions. John Dee (Planet Ark) and Kylie Kwong (local foodie) are both currently featured.