The announcement of the federal government’s new Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) and $30 million in funding to eliminate food waste has been welcomed by Woolworths.
The Fight Food Waste CRC will support industry-led collaborations between researchers, industry and community partners to help improve the future sustainability and profitability of the Australian food industry.
Woolworths is a founding retail partner in the program’s advisory group and aims to build on its previous engagement with the federal government as a key member of the advisory group that supported the development of the National Food Waste Strategy.
“We have 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,” Woolworths Food Group Head of Sustainability Adrian Cullen said.
“Partnerships in programs like the Fight Food Waste CRC allow us to play a constructive role alongside researchers, government and industry partners to address this very important issue, and we’re delighted to play a leading role in the retail sector.”
As part of Woolworths’ larger commitment to eliminate food waste, it has recently diverted more than 50 million kilograms of food from landfill and directed it to food rescue, farmers and organic composting.
Woolworths has also donated the equivalent of 500,000 meals per month of surplus edible food to charities across Australia via national food rescue and hunger relief partnerships with Foodbank, OzHarvest and FareShare.
The retail group also launched Food Savers, a customer-education program to help consumers reduce food waste at home and introduced the ‘Odd Bunch’ range of wonky fruit and vegetables. Woolworths is now approaching 100,000,000 kilograms’ worth of ‘Odd Bunch’ sales since December 2014.