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ARC Food Waste Project

Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project 2010-2013

Zeroing in on Food Waste: Measuring, understanding and reducing food waste

Dr Kirrilly Thompson, Prof Drew Dawson, Dr John Boland (UniSA), Dr John Coveney (Flinders University), Dr Paul Ward (Flinders University), Dr Anne Sharp (UniSA)

 

Plates showing wasted foodAustralians waste nearly 50% of the food they buy, producing over 3 million tonnes of garbage worth more than $5b and increasing our carbon footprint through transport costs and green house gases from decomposition.  Despite this significant wastage, reducing food waste has proved difficult because the reasons for over purchasing are not rational; they have strong emotional and cultural determinants. Changing this behaviour requires understanding food purchase, preparation, recycling and disposal as socio-cultural as well as economically determined behaviour.

This three-year project is a collaboration between UniSA, Flinders University, the Local Government Association of SA and Zero Waste SA. This project will embed an anthropologist within South Australian homes to understand why people waste food and enable the development of effective interventions to reduce this waste. The anthropological investigation will then be followed up by the economic, environmental and psychological modelling and explication food wastage in South Australia.

More information on the project can be found below:

Project News

Project Team

Project Publications

 

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