Our war on food waste

Published: 2 August 2023
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A person throwing a bucket of food.

What could you do with an extra $2,600 a year? This is how much the average Victorian household throws away in wasted food.

Not only is this waste hurting your hip pocket but it's also bad for the environment. Food thrown into your rubbish bin ends up in landfills where it rots and produces methane, a greenhouse gas.

When we waste food, we also waste the resources used to grow this food (like water, soils and energy), and all the energy used to process, package and transport this food from farms to markets to our homes.

What we’re doing in Victoria

We’re committed to halving the amount of food and garden waste going to landfills by 2030.

As part of the Victorian Government's circular economy plan, Recycling Victoria: a new economy, households will have a new bin or access to a new drop-off recycling service for food organics and garden organics, or FOGO.

Instead of going to landfills, materials from these bins are turned into compost, bio-fertilisers, soil blends and mulches for our public green spaces, farms and vineyards.

Working with councils

To help educate local communities about what goes into the FOGO stream, we’ve worked with councils to produce a range of resources like videos, flyers, stickers and magnets which will help reduce contamination in the organics bin and improve the quality of recycled compost products.

Through our Buy Recycled program, we’re empowering local councils to use more recycled materials and products in infrastructure, landscaping, parks and gardens.

This program helps build knowledge of available recycled products and sustainable procurement processes, while connecting councils with suppliers and other councils who are leading the way in this space.

We’ve also created a guide for councils to explain the benefits of compost and how to use it in public parks and gardens.

Investment

The Victorian Government is investing in infrastructure, research and the development of end markets to grow our state's capacity to recycle food and garden organics, while improving the quality of recycled products.

You’ll see this funding come to life through grant recipients like Burdett Sands which will install new equipment to produce a finer grade of compost for Melbourne’s sporting grounds, or Manningtree Corporation which will expand its compost facility at Elmore to process an additional 40,000 tonnes of organic waste each year.

Thanks to funding from Sustainability Victoria’s Circular Economy Business Support Fund, major vegetable producer Fresh Select established a processing facility that turns excess vegetables that would otherwise go to waste into snacks and powders for smoothies, soups, sauces and baked goods.

A person cooking sausage on the grill.

What you can do

One of the biggest issues facing the organics recycling industry is contamination, which can happen when the wrong items are put into the FOGO stream.

If materials are contaminated, they often can’t be recycled and may instead have to be sent to landfills.

Contamination can have other significant flow-on effects, like damaging recycling machinery and affecting the quality of our agricultural soils.

If you have an organics bin at home, you can help improve the quality of our recycled organic materials by checking your local council website to see what can and can’t be recycled.

You can also reduce food waste in your household by following these simple tips:

Two people cooking together in a kitchen.

More information

Learn more about avoiding food waste.