About the Food Waste Loop project:

Yandina Community Gardens program, Food Waste Loop, diverts food ‘waste’ from Yandina’s food businesses into compost systems.

Yandina Community Gardens have created a localised waste management system. We have partnered with cafes, restaurants, coffee roastery’s, and grocery stores and divert the towns waste into three different compost systems. These are aerobic hot compost, worm farm composting, and black soldier fly larvae composting! We are recording how much of Yandina town waste we are able to process, and evaluating the viability of the Food Waste Loop program to be replicated across Australia.

This program reduces greenhouse gas emissions generated by landfills, whilst creating a valuable, nutrient-rich compost resource. We imagine a future where food ‘waste’ was actually not wasted, and was turned into an amazing resource for the local community to enjoy.

The Australian Government has committed to halve the amount of organic waste sent to landfill for disposal by 2030, as per the National Waste Policy Action Plan. This means a reduction of 2.7 million tonnes of organic waste that is currently thrown out and ends up in landfill. The township of Yandina is playing a direct role in helping meet these targets. We are working towards easing the load on the following issues:

• Eliminating global food waste would save 4.4 million tonnes of C02 a year, the equivalent of taking one in four cars off the road

• If food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after USA and China

• The Government estimates food waste costs the Australian economy $20 billion each year

• Over 5 million tonnes of food ends up as landfill each year, enough to fill 9,000 Olympic sized swimming pools

• Landfill gas contributes 15 million tonnes to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

OzHarvest, 2020

The Food Waste Loop program commenced June 2020. This project received grant funding from the Australian Government’s Communities Environment Program.

To share the journey with us, follow us on Facebook (Yandina Community Gardens), and Instagram (@ycgfoodwasteloop)