In 2016-17, disposal was the largest destination for Australia’s food waste.
Source: DCCEEW / Arcadis (2019), National Food
Waste Baseline: Final Assessment Report, Table 1, p.6.
Note: Disposed includes landfill, sewer/wastewater
treatment and other disposal. Figures may not sum to total due to
rounding.
Homes throw out around one-third of Australia’s food waste - more than primary production or manufacturing. Hover for details.
Source: DCCEEW / Arcadis (2019), National Food Waste Baseline: Final Assessment Report, Table 1, p.6. Values show thousand tonnes of food waste generated in 2016/17, converted to million tonnes for display. Note: “Other sectors” combines hospitality, retail, institutions and wholesale. The four bars sum to 7.3 million tonnes, the national food waste baseline used in Charts 1-3.
Households, hospitality and primary production mostly dispose of food waste, while manufacturing diverts most of it into recycling or recovery. Hover for tonnes and percentages.
Source: DCCEEW / Arcadis (2019), National Food Waste Baseline: Final Assessment Report, Table 1, p.6. Values show thousand tonnes of food waste in 2016/17. Bar segments show the share of each sector’s food waste that was disposed or sent to recycling/recovery. Disposed includes landfill, sewer/wastewater and not harvested/ploughed-in food waste. Recycling/recovery includes composting, anaerobic digestion, bio-based processing, land application, controlled combustion and other recovery. Note: Animal feed and food rescue are excluded because the baseline treats them as food outcomes rather than food waste outcomes.
Red meat does more than 10× the overall average climate damage per kilo wasted. Labels show the total tonnes Australia wastes.
Source: FIAL (2021), National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study, Tables 5 & 6, p.17 (hotspot analysis, 2018-19). Bar length = climate damage per kilogram wasted, calculated as each commodity’s total emissions divided by its total waste across all seven supply-chain stages. Text labels show total tonnes wasted: Mt = million tonnes, kt = thousand tonnes. Hover shows the underlying totals. Dotted line = overall average (total emissions ÷ total waste). Note: hotspot figures use 18 representative commodities totalling 8.35 Mt, so they do not reconcile exactly with the 7.3 Mt 2016-17 baseline used in earlier charts (different study, year and method).
Australia can more than halve food waste per person by 2030, but population growth means total waste only falls if action beats the baseline trend.
Source: FIAL (2021), National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study, Table 11, p.29. Values are modelled projections for 2020-2030. Solid lines show total annual food waste in million tonnes on the left axis. Dashed lines show kilograms per person per year on the right axis. The dotted line is an indicative population-adjusted halving line, calculated as half of 312 kg per person multiplied by forecast population. Note: The Do Nothing scenario holds per-capita waste constant at 312 kg while total waste rises with population. FIAL reports the Recommended Scenario reaching 4.4 Mt by 2030, or a 52% reduction from the population-adjusted baseline. This chart uses the 2021 FIAL baseline edition, so it should not be read as a direct continuation of the 2016-17 baseline used in earlier charts.