The following extract is from the National Food Waste Assessment - Final Report prepared last year for the Australian Government by the Institute of Sustainable Futers and the University of Technology Sydney.
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The increased generation of food waste is a global and
national problem. It has several facets, all of which can benefit from a clear
understanding of the size and nature of food waste generated across all phases
of the food production and consumption cycle. Of most concern to many
stakeholders is the impact food waste has on the generation of greenhouse gas
emissions such as methane and carbon dioxide. However, there are also growing
concerns about the economic and environmental viability of existing food waste
disposal systems, as well as interest in food waste as a resource input to
agriculture.
Many studies have been undertaken to assess food waste in
Australia. This data assessment project has collated and reviewed the quality
and nature of 1262 such studies, ranging from regional waste management
authority reporting and research papers to national studies, and presented the
results in the form of an extensive spreadsheet database and this report. While
many of these studies may be of sufficient quality and relevance for their
intended purpose (e.g. a physical waste audit of a specific company undertaken
to inform a waste management strategy for that company), it is not possible to
aggregate the data from all such studies to make sufficiently accurate
conclusions about food waste data at the national (or even state) level. This
view has been formed on the basis that the available data is extremely variable
in terms of what is being studied (packaging, food waste, ‘green waste’,
non-specified or ‘other’ waste), geographical coverage, methodology and
sampling approaches.
When considered together, existing studies related to food waste
data (e.g. proportion of putrescible waste in residential solid waste streams)
indicate that Australian data on food waste generation and fate (e.g. landfill,
recovered, collected for charitable redistribution) is on the whole scarce,
fragmented and disaggregated. This research has confirmed that for most phases
of the food production cycle this characterisation is accurate.
Although the absence of rigorously measured and verifiable
data presents an uncomfortable degree of uncertainty for policy development
processes, the implications of different approaches can be explored on a
theoretical basis using existing estimates. For example, preliminary
evaluations of several studies by federal and state government indicate that
existing food waste management practices are contributing to Australia’s
greenhouse gas burden and creating opportunity costs from lost productivity.
Policy developed to respond to these and other challenges
will require a much larger and more consistent base of data if confident progress
in these areas is to be achieved.
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