Woolworths pleased to see food waste reduction is now a national priority

Monday, 20th November, 2017: Woolworths has reaffirmed its commitment to reducing food waste and pledged its support to the Federal Government's National Food Waste Strategy. 

The strategy aims to deliver a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030*, and was announced by Josh Frydenberg, Federal Minister for the Environment and Energy in Melbourne today at the inaugural National Food Waste Summit.

Woolworths was involved in the advisory group who was consulted as part of the development of the strategy. Woolworths has a long standing public commitment to work towards zero food waste to landfill, with a range of programs already underway and others in development across the Woolworths Food Group. This includes The Odd Bunch, which was highlighted by the Minister during his address at the Summit.

Adrian Cullen, Head of Sustainability, Woolworths Food Group said; “Woolworths has made great strides in reducing our food waste to landfill and we recognise that there is still much more that we need to do. Currently, 91% of stores have a food waste diversion program that successfully diverts 60,500 tonnes of food each year.

“The National Food Waste Strategy sets a very ambitious target of a 50% reduction by 2030, though Woolworths is committed to helping meet and exceed this target via our own activities and supporting our customers in playing their part.”

Existing programs already underway at Woolworths that support the strategy include:

• Structured programs to manage food waste from Woolworths stores, which has resulted in more than 60,000 tonnes being diverted in the last 12 months.
• Food Rescue partnerships with hunger relief agencies OzHarvest, FoodBank,  FareShare and Secondbite, which sees surplus food from Woolworths supermarkets redirected to hunger relief, rather than sent to landfill. Woolworths currently donates the equivalent of 500,000 meals per month through these programs.
• A customer education program called Food Savers, to inspire Australians to get the most value and use from their food.
• The Odd Bunch is value range of delicious fresh fruit and vegetables, which don’t always look perfect but taste great. The range that helps minimise food wastage at the farm, and sells around 50,000 tonnes each year.

More on Woolworths’ commitment to reducing food waste can be found in the 2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Report.

* 50% reduction of food waste by 2030, based on 2015 volumes.