The good news: over the past two decades Victorians have reduced the amount of food being sent to landfill. The not so good news: we’re still sending an enormous amount.

According to Alicia Darvall, director of regions and partnerships with Sustainability Victoria (SV), 2.4 million tonnes of food waste was collected in 2020 alone, resulting in three million tonnes of carbon emissions.

“Over the last two decades, food and organic waste collection has increased by 388 per cent, meaning more Victorians are recycling food and garden waste than ever before,” says Darvall. “[But] what we’re finding is for every apple eaten, we’re wasting about half an apple, on average,” says Darvall. “For every loaf of bread we eat, about half a loaf is thrown away.”

SV is supporting Victoria to reach the national target to halve food waste by 2030. To help reach that goal, it’s forging partnerships with businesses, not-for-profits, universities and communities on behalf of the Victorian Government. One such partnership is with a group of social enterprises called Moving Feast (which includes STREAT and Melbourne Farmers Markets among it) for Open Sauce, a circular economy initiative aiming to give food waste a smarter purpose.

The idea behind Open Sauce is that food waste still has a high value. It’s just that most of us don’t know how to unlock it.

“Sure, we could throw out the apples and create compost which we can use on the garden,” says Darvall. “But it’s far better we use it to create an apple sauce or some kind of chutney which can be resold and maintains its nutritional value.”

Open Sauce is encouraging people and business to rethink their food and other waste and see it as a precious resource. Leading by example, STREAT has a line of Open Sauce retail products such as preserves and chutneys created from oversupply of produce or products that would normally end up in landfill.

The Open Sauce Project - as its ‘open source’ pun name reflects – is also about sharing recipes and food preserving ideas with the public. At the Moving Feast website you’ll find recipes for nutritious foods and drinks made from scraps that would otherwise be discarded, as well as versions made and sold by the social enterprises themselves. Recipes include an iced tea made from pineapple skins and spent citrus (with a strong hint to throw a little gin into the mix), and a passionfruit skin jam. There’s also more than a hundred ideas for circular products being workshopped by the community, including fruit leather, DIY curry powder from leftover spices, and choc chip cookies made with almond pulp.

The value of Open Sauce is it shows how making a difference to our own food waste is within reach for most of us. “To be honest, it just takes a little bit of planning and very low kitchen skills,” says Darvall. “I also think we’re harking back to the times of our grandparents, where you pull the Fowlers Vacola preserving jars off the top shelf and start bottling the fruit again, rather than just buying fruit off season with lots of food miles.”

Open Sauce by Moving Feast is also just one example of grassroots environmental action, something SV actively encourages.

For those that might have their own ideas fermenting (pun definitely intended), Darvall says SV is all ears. “If anyone has an idea for a circular business or wants to become more focused on circular economy initiatives, they’re welcome to book time directly with one of the team online,” says Darvall. “A key part of the success is partnerships. It’s one of those rare opportunities where you can reach out and find someone who wants to have that conversation with you.”

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Sustainability Victoria.
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