Closing the Loop on Food Waste: Stakeholder Views and Experiences from Southeast Queensland, Australia

Nikita Zatyko; Savindi Caldera; Cheryl Desha

doi:10.3390/waste1030038

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Closing the Loop on Food Waste: Stakeholder Views and Experiences from Southeast Queensland, Australia

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

Closing the Loop on Food Waste: Stakeholder Views and Experiences from Southeast Queensland, Australia

Nikita Zatyko, Savindi Caldera and Cheryl Desha

Waste, Vol.1(3), pp.640-653

2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/waste1030038

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Abstract

food waste

food organics garden organics (FOGO)

closing the loop

circular sustainable economy

Every year in Australia, the household, commercial and industry sectors generate more than five million tonnes of food waste, with the majority of it ending up in landfills that are costly to run and diminishing in availability. There are urgent calls for effective waste management practices to better address the challenges related to increasing volumes of food waste. This study evaluates potential food waste collection and composting initiatives that will ensure the implementation of the appropriate policies and technologies, and best practice of utilizing food waste as a natural resource. A series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with practitioners from the Southeast Queensland waste industry to gain insights on the challenges and opportunities for implementing a Food Organics, Garden Organics (FOGO) system. The interviews revealed five key themes: levies and taxes, capital investment challenges, lack of capacity, contract inefficiencies, and separate waste streams. Organisations and companies in the waste industry heavily rely on funding in order to technologically advance. There is a divergence of attention between technology and policy. Advancement of technology grows faster than the policies that regulate the appropriate use and level of effectiveness of the introduced technology. Both policy and technological changes need to occur simultaneously for Queensland to evolve and develop a social-economic system that favours a non-wasteful and sustainable future.

Details

Title: Closing the Loop on Food Waste: Stakeholder Views and Experiences from Southeast Queensland, Australia
Authors: Nikita Zatyko (Author) - Griffith University
Savindi Caldera (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Cheryl Desha (Author) - Griffith University
Publication details: Waste, Vol.1(3), pp.640-653
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date published: 2023
DOI: 10.3390/waste1030038
ISSN: 2813-0391
Copyright note: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Organisation Unit: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99741798302621
Output Type: Journal article

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