I was walking past my local supermarket last week and was shocked to see what looked like hundreds of kilos of fresh produce being thrown away. Before fruit and veg even reach the shelf it estimated 30-40% are rejected mostly because they do not match consumers’ and supermarkets’ high cosmetic standards.

The wastage doesn’t stop there.   For the average Australian household $1,036 of food is thrown away each year with the biggest offenders being young consumers (18-24) and households with incomes of more than $100,000 per year.

If you add up all the food Australia wastes each year, it’s enough to fill 450,000 garbage trucks.  Placed end to end, the convoy would bridge the gap between Australia and New Zealand just over three times.

The global population explosion combined with the steady effects of climate change is forecast to create a worldwide food shortage in the next 10 years.  Our behavior needs to change and luckily some forward thinking people in Yorkshire are onto it.

Britain’s first ‘social’ supermarket has opened and it will enable people with limited incomes to buy cut-price stock from major manufacturers that otherwise would have been thrown away. Members of Community Shop can buy good-quality items for a fraction of the usual shelf price. The products from major chains such as Asda and Marks & Spencer are fit for consumption and in-date, but may have been rejected for a number of reasons, such as a problem with the labeling, or as a result of over-stocking.

Let’s hope this pilot store works, and similar schemes are rolled out in Australia. It could be just what we need to tackle our massive food wastage issues.