Importance of food waste reporting for collaboration between Australian retail, farming, and food rescue organisations

Australian retail and farming organisations act as major collaborating partners for Australian food rescue organisations by donating surplus edible food waste to Australian food rescue organisations. Previous studies indicate the importance of food waste data of the food donors for rescue efforts of food rescue organisations. Despite its importance, this study finds a gap in the literature which examines food waste reporting of Australian retail and farming organisations in the context of food rescue efforts. This study aims to investigate the importance of food waste reporting for collaboration between Australian retail farming and Australian food rescue organisations. To achieve this aim, firstly this study conducted a content analysis of published reports of Australian retail, farming, and food rescue organisations to examine how these organisations report their food waste management practices. Secondly, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with Australian retail, farming, and food rescue organisations to investigate how food waste reporting can be used to overcome collaboration challenges between Australian retail and farming organisations and Australian food rescue organisations. This study used qualitative research methods due to the exploratory nature of the research. This study found that Australian retail and farming organisations do not report important food waste data such as total food waste, edible food waste and disposed of food waste in their published reports. This study further found that food rescue organisations highly depend on the food waste data of their donors for planning and forecasting their food rescue efforts, however, retail and farming organisations do not capture food waste data within their organisations due to the high labour cost associated with food donation work. This study recommends policymakers provide tax benefits for food donors and introduce food waste reporting guidelines to improve the food waste reporting of retail and farming organisations. This study further recommends retail and farming organisations increase food waste data capturing metrics to represent the quality, value and consistency of food waste, and increase the availability of food waste reports via social media platforms to increase public awareness about food waste. The findings of this research can be used by Australian retail and farming organisations and food rescue organisations to strengthen their collaborative partnerships by improving food waste reporting. Further research is needed to investigate food waste data recoding at Australian retail and farming organisations and develop food waste reporting guidelines for Australian retail and farming organisations.