Eating out can be such a waste!
Australian foodservice businesses such as restaurants and cafes produce over 250,000 tonnes of food waste every year that ends up in landfill. This generates approximately 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalents) a year. RMIT University’s nation-wide Watch My Waste is innovative research from RMIT University into food waste in Australian foodservice businesses. The research has already generated some exciting data that is creating a previously little known picture of food waste in the foodservice sector. So far over 200 individual food waste audits have been completed, with over 8,900kgs (8.9 tonnes) of food waste generated from 70,000 customers. On average, 120g of food waste was disposed of for every person served – that’s equivalent to a whole large muffin or half a steak per person thrown in the bin.
Watch my Waste want to hear from anyone who eats out.
The Watch my Waste research team want to know what your experience with food and food waste was when you last ate out. Anyone who has eaten out, grabbed takeaway or been served a meal by any food business in the last week is eligible to do this 10 minute survey: www.watchmywaste.com.au/whats-on-your-plate, helping uncover the secret life of food waste. Let restaurants, cafes and other food businesses know what you want, while at the same time contributing to the reduction of food waste.
Watch my Waste is helping food businesses measure and reduce their waste
Most foodservice businesses do not know how much food they throw away each week. Businesses who participate in the Watch My Waste research measure their food waste over time and fill in a business operations survey that helps identify the potential influential factors behind food waste creation. The good news is that participating businesses saw their food waste decrease by around 40% during the research period, which means significant savings!
Foodservice business interested in participating can register at www.watchmywaste.com.au/research-registration. Registrations open until December 2016.