Horticultural products are known to be especially susceptible to damage and waste across the value chain; they are the most vulnerable type of food when compared to grains, meat and seafood. Solutions have multilevel impact via improved crop utilisation, profitability and supply chain resilience, convert unused product and surplus into value for growers and increase opportunities for food donation.

In excess of 140,000t of meat is wasted annually in both households and the cold chain. Wastage in the red meat sector occurs at all points across the value chain, however, including on-farm, during transport, at processing, across the cold chain, and at the wholesale, retail and consumer ends.

More than 319,400 tonnes per year of food is wasted across the Australian bread and bakery value chain. This food waste is equivalent to the weight of 456 million loaves of bread, creating costs for businesses, households, and the environment.

Food rescue acts to prevent food from being wasted by collecting, storing and redistributing food otherwise destined for disposal. There are many challenges facing the food rescue sector due its complexity and its operating at many different points throughout the food value chain.

Food waste at retail level consists of damaged food, spoilage, unsold inventory, short-dated products and recalled products.

About a third of seafood is either lost or wasted globally. In many regions much seafood loss occurs during processing when large proportions of fish is unused. However, food loss and waste occurs right across the value chain including capture, storage, wholesale, retail and consumption.

Packaging plays an important role in preventing damage and spoilage at the wholesale, retail and in-home parts of the food value chain. Packaging technologies have the potential to divert thousands of tons of food waste from landfill annually. This could be through prolonging shelf-life, preventing damage, enabling greater portion control, and changing consumer behaviours.

Pre-farmgate wastage is where a lot of ‘food loss’ occurs, where product intended for human consumption ends up not leaving the farm or is disposed of (e.g. ploughed in, sent to compost or landfill). This could be due to inefficient farming operations, or market-driven factors such as ineligibility for retail due to not meeting strict QA requirements.

Food waste from the dairy supply chain has previously been identified as one of the six highest Australian food waste sources. Currently there are 0.71 million tonnes of actual dairy food waste being generated across the dairy supply chain. Key categories of food waste include by-products from cheese production (e.g. whey), process wastes and finished product disposal.

The lion’s share of food waste in Australia occurs in the home; about 30% in total.There are many reasons why so much food waste happens in the home, from buying or cooking to much or simply changing your plans. In-home solutions to food waste have the potential to have the greatest impact on reduction of greenhouse gas emissions coming from food loss and waste.

Upcycled food products prevent food waste by creating new, high quality products out of surplus food. Upcycling food is an innovative approach to food waste because it is the first consumer product-based solution, making it highly scalable and economically sustainable.