The Department of Environment and Science wants Queenslanders to adopt new strategies to avoid wasting food and to divert unwanted organic material away from landfill to be recycled.
The Department’s Queensland Organics Strategy and Action Plan 2022-2032 challenges Queenslanders to have a better relationship with their food and reduce what they throw in their rubbish bins.
Launching the 10-year Strategy and Action Plan, Minister for the Environment, Meaghan Scanlon said it was the result of an extensive consultation process over the past year, which included a survey, written submissions, workshops and information sessions.
“We waste too much food, leaving it to be dumped in landfill, while others go hungry,” Ms Scanlon said.
“This is not only having an increasing cost on our household budgets — estimated at $2,200 a year — but on our environment, as unwanted food and garden waste dumped in landfill produces damaging methane gas,” she said.
The Minister said the aim of the initiative was to halve the amount of food waste generated, divert 80 per cent of the organic material going to landfill, and achieve a 70 per cent recycling rate for organics by 2030.
With Food Action Week just two weeks away, Ms Scanlon also launched the Department’s Love Food, Hate Waste challenge.
“I call on Queenslanders to get involved and sign up to adopt easy actions to help cut their household food waste,” she said.
“Participants will also go into the running to win a prize at the end of the challenge.”
The Department’s 39-page Organics Strategy can be accessed at this PS News link and 27-page Action Plan at this link.
