State Government Throwing Millions of Dollars into Stopping Food Waste

BY JESSICA ROUSE

Australians waste 400,000,000 tonnes of food each year, but now organisations in the Hunter can apply for grants to bring that figure down.

In a bid to cut down on the 345 kilograms of food Aussies throw out per household, the NSW Government is throwing millions of dollars worth of grants the Hunter's way to bring the waste down.

Councils and food relief agencies in the Hunter can apply for a share in $2 million in grants to help rescue surplus food before it gets sent to landfill.

Image www.foodwise.com.au

"Landfill is filling up prematurely which is obviously a problem for us as well, but if you can make better use of that surplus food, instead of just throwing it away help people who are in a difficult situation to meet those family budgets and meet the needs," said Parliamentary Secretary for the Hunter Scot MacDonald.

Grants of up to $200,000 are available over two years to support local projects that raise awareness and improve education on food rescue.

The OzHarvest is a local organisation across Australia who collects quality excess food from commercial outlets and delivers it directly to more than 1000 charities supporting people in need across the country.

"Supermarkets do a really great job, instead of throwing it away they call these organisations that distribute it amongst the community that really needs it and importantly though they do need a lot of infrastructure I've noticed when you do visit the depots,"

They've got a lot of freezers, a lot of fridges, shelving all of those sorts of things and that's primarily what these grants are aimed at," said Scot MacDonald.