When Karl Riseborough realised how much food went to waste each week at his Sydney pub and brewery, he was shocked. Grain left over from the beer-making process was thrown out, as well as food waste from the kitchen.
What surprised him most was "the volume" of waste on top of the spent grain.
"The food scraps coming back, the plate waste, the kitchen prep waste ... you don't really notice when it was all going straight into the bin," Mr Riseborough said.
Food waste expert Belinda Chellingworth says many traders have no idea how much waste they are generating, or how much it is affecting their bottom line.
Every year about 7.6 million tonnes of food is wasted in Australia at a cost of more than $36 billion to the economy. Of that wasted food, 70 per cent is edible, with critical knock-on effects for landfill management, food security and the climate.
With the support of Ms Chellingworth, who happily calls herself a "garbologist", Mr Riseborough has stopped throwing away 50 kilograms of spent grain from each batch of beer he brews.
"So now I have regular users who come and collect it once I've brewed and use it for the benefit of their gardens or their animals," Mr Riseborough said. "We had two 240-litre bins that were getting collected each week. We're now down to one bin collected each fortnight."
He says that saves him about $5,000 a year.
The cumulative effect not realised
Australia's hospitality sector wastes 1.2 million tonnes of food each year, according to the Sustainable Restaurant Association. The economic impact of food waste in the food service sector is about $6.4 billion, averaging about $66,000 annually per business.
Ms Chellingworth said less than a quarter of businesses regularly inspected their food waste.
"Typically, many businesses, if they've got food left over at the end of their operations or the end of the day, then it will be landfilled," she said. "For many businesses, and particularly large businesses, the cost of food waste across their operations isn't fully realised because they incur it multiple times, but it's not obvious."