麻豆淫院

Composting and green bins are making their mark on recycling organic waste, but Australian households are still responsible for millions of tons of greenhouse-gas emitting food waste ending up in landfill.

To combat the rising environmental, social and economic costs, Flinders University experts surveyed more than 1,500 South Australians to gain insights into improving various short-term and long-term food waste policies.

The article, "Exploring South Australian households' perceptions towards various food waste policies," has been in Ecological Economics.

The online survey considered whether financial incentives, penalties for 'green' organic bin misuse, more frequent green bin collection times, or food waste education were considered effective, feasible, acceptable and fair to householders.

"In Australia, more than half of total food waste is from households, and if not recycled or diverted into an organic bin will often end up in landfill, increasing council costs, as well as contributing to environmental degradation and release of greenhouse gases," says Flinders Professor Sarah Wheeler, from the Center of Social Impact, the lead author of a new article in the journal of Ecological Economics.

"Councils and other authorities are currently experimenting with waste collection and other policies to both reduce household food waste and increase recycling of household food waste."

Globally, 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food, accounting for a third of global food consumption, is wasted annually.

Growing, packaging, transporting, marketing and retailing food is a major economic cost and use of resources.

The SA State Government is aiming for zero avoidable waste to be sent to landfill by 2030 (Green Industries SA). The Flinders Center for Social Impact study sought to determine the policies that would be most successful in achieving this goal.

While respondents in the study indicated that public awareness information and education was strong in fairness and acceptability, they were probably not going to be that effective, and there could be more response to economic incentives, such as more frequent collection or penalties on green bin contamination.

A co-author of the study, Dr. Daniel Gregg, a senior research fellow at Flinders University, says, "These market-based incentives such as fees, taxes, pricing, penalties and subsidies can be effective in diverting food waste from landfill and reducing food waste in the long term鈥攁s can a complementary information-education program to improve food waste behavior."

At present, South Australian households are not charged by how much waste they throw out.

"Interestingly, people who conscientiously manage their food consumption and have less waste overall were more supportive of economic incentive policy settings鈥攅specially different waste pricing settings鈥攖han other households. However, overall all households were in favor of increased penalties for bin misuse," he says.

"The results indicate that councils and government always face trade-offs in terms of implementing food waste policies: the most effective policies in addressing food waste are often the least popular, which makes change difficult, but possible."