Banana Industry Sector Action Plan for Food Waste Reduction 2024: Technical Report

This report provides a whole-chain food waste reduction sector action plan (SAP) for the Australian banana industry to achieve halving food waste by 2030. A mixed methodologies approach, including a literature review and stakeholder engagement, was employed. The WRAP UK whole chain food waste reduction plan toolkit (WCP) was used for the development of this action plan entitled the Banana Industry Sector Action Plan for Food Waste Reduction (Banana Industry SAP) through a five-stage process, including initiate, plan, solution, actions, and monitoring. The review of literature and engagement with key stakeholders across the banana supply chain were designed to achieve the following: • Identify hotspots of waste in the banana supply chain from primary production to retailing stage (i.e., before consumption). This project did not deal with consumption /household waste. • Explore root causes of waste in the banana supply chain. • Examine and prioritise banana waste management strategies using a food recovery hierarchy. • Prioritise management options (i.e., proposing actions for managing waste). • Develop a banana industry food waste sector action plan. • Propose an outline of measuring the impacts of outcomes of this plan. This report presents findings regarding hotspots and root causes of food waste in the Australian banana industry through triangulation of the results from a literature review, stakeholder interviews and stakeholder workshops. Through stakeholder engagement, solutions to reduce banana food waste were identified. Shortlisted strategies and actions were tested in a stakeholder workshop and are presented in this report. Finally, the report outlines indicators for assessing the impacts and outcomes of the actions using a waste monitoring and evaluation framework. Nine strategies were identified, including four supporting preventions, two for repurposing food waste and three for the enabling environment. Multiple actions were also listed under each strategy with potential outcomes in different time frames. The identified strategies are outlined below.