National Food Waste committee announced

A steering committee has been established to oversee the implementation of the National Food Waste Strategy, which was announced at the National Food Waste Summit in November last year.

Food waste is estimated to cost the Australian economy $20 billion each year and have significant impacts on the environment through the wasted use of resources such as land, water, energy and fuel to produce and distribute food. When disposed of in landfill, food waste has other environmental impacts such as the production of greenhouse gas emissions.

Initial funding of $1.3 million was provided to support:

• an independent organisation that will develop an implementation plan and a monitoring and evaluation framework for the strategy, and coordinate priority areas of work

• a voluntary commitment program that will initially engage businesses and industries to commit to actions that reduce food waste

• a National Food Waste Baseline so that we can monitor and track progress towards our food waste reduction goal.

The Food Waste Steering Committee will provide guidance and advice to Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL) as it develops a plan in 2018 that sets out the actions to be taken to reduce Australia's food waste over the short, medium and long term.

FIAL's plan will be accompanied by a voluntary commitment program that will engage businesses and industries to reduce food waste as well as a National Food Waste Baseline so progress towards the food waste reduction goal can be monitored and tracked.

Members of the steering committee include:

• Mr Geoffrey Annison, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Australian Food and Grocery Council

• Dr Martin Cole, Deputy Director, CSIRO Agriculture and Food

• Mr Stephen Ferguson, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Hotels Association

• Mr John Harvey, Managing Director, AgriFutures Australia

• Ms Ronni Kahn, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, OzHarvest

• Ms Nerida Kelton, Executive Officer, Australian Institute of Packaging

• Mr Tim Lester, Executive Officer, Council of Rural R&D Corporations

• Dr Hermione Parsons, Director, Centre for Supply Chain and Logistics, Deakin University

• Dr Greg Picker, Executive Director, Refrigerants Australia

• Ms Fiona Simson, President, National Farmers' Federation

• Mr Max Spedding, Chief Executive Officer, National Waste and Recycling Industry Council

• Mr Russell Zimmerman, Executive Director, Australian Retailers Association

Further information is available at: http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/national-waste-policy/food-waste