Page 29 - Packaging News Magazine Jan-Feb 2019

WHAT’S COMING UP
APPMA NEWS
Brisbane members get educated on food waste
A full house of APPMA members gathered for a dinner event in Brisbane late last year to hear Associate Professor Karli Verghese, who is the Reduce Program leader on the Fight Food Waste CRC, outline the challenges and drivers for change in addressing Australia’s food waste issue.
In an interesting and enlightening presentation, Karli Verghese gave the audience an overview of what the Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) is about, why preventing food waste is important, and the 10-year journey mapped out ahead for the CRC.
To set the scene from a global perspective, Verghese cited food waste statistics that show that $1.6 trillion of food is lost or wasted across the global food supply chain – from farm to fork. Developed countries, with an estimated one billion people, account for 56 per cent of that figure, with most of that wastage at retail and consumer level. The remaining 44 per cent comes from developing countries with a total population of six billion people, the losses are mostly on farm or post harvest in distribution.
“There are different challenges and reasons why loss is occurring, be it cold chain integrity, storage, processing, buying too much... you only need to think of your own fridge to see how much food is wasted...”
In Australia, she says, it’s estimated that about $18-20bn of food is lost... but nearly half of that is happening in our own households. Statistics show one in four shopping bags per week end up in the
LEFT: APPMA vice chair Robert Marguccio and RMIT associate professor Karli Verghese, the Reduce Program leader, Fight Food Waste CRC.
BELOW: Brisbane members gathered in November to find out more about how to address Australia’s food waste challenge.
bin, and then landfill, only to generate methane and create adverse environmental impacts, she said.
Verghese related that in 2017 there was a lot of momentum around the food waste issue in Australia because the government committed to the UN goal to halve food waste by 2030, and to be able
to do that they also had to develop a national food waste strategy. She went on to outline the CRC’s three research programmes: Reduce, Transform and Engage. The Reduce programme is all about finding ways to reduce food waste in the supply chain. The Transform programme involves looking at ways of changing processes in the supply chain to prevent waste, and redirect unused food to create value-added products, while the Engage programme involves not only engaging industry but also increasing consumer awareness of the problem
and getting buy-in from the consumer to change waste-producing behaviours.
One of the key overall objectives is preventing food going to landfill, and redirecting it to support important organisations like Foodbank who are helping to feed food insecure Australians. Acknowledging the APPMA’s support of the CRC [and Foodbank], Verghese concluded that this is just the start of a decade-long and hopefully successful journey in changing the way we do things in the food industry, and encouraged members to become involved in projects that will help drive change.
AUSPACK 2019
26-29 MARCH
MCEC, MELBOURNE www.auspack.com.au
AUSPACK 2019
BUSINESS & INDUSTRY CONFERENCE
26-27 MARCH MCEC, MELBOURNE
APPMA AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE GALA DINNER
27 MARCH
MCEC, MELBOURNE
NEXT GEN BREAKFAST FORUM 29 MARCH
MCEC, MELBOURNE
PROPAK ASIA 2019
12- 15 JUNE
BITEC | BANGKOK INTERNATIONAL TRADE & EXHIBITION CENTRE
BANGKOK, THAILAND
WWW.PACKAGINGNEWS.COM.AU JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2019 029