This exploratory study, funded by NSW EPA, sought to understand the food waste behaviours of family-based households to inform future intervention strategies to reduce household food waste. We used a video-ethnography approach to gain insights from within households, something which is - to the best of our knowledge - a first-of-its-kind study in Australia.

To get the nation onboard with reducing food waste at home, OzHarvest developed a world-first product, the Use-It-Up™ Tape that makes it easy and fun to see what food needs to be used up in your fridge or pantry. Conducting trials to evaluate the impact of the tape, BehaviourWorks Australia found a reduction of 40% of the total amount of household food waste.

Building on the video-ethnography research, this project had two goals: (i) To identify the most impactful behaviours to tackle household food waste in Australia , and (ii) To measure the relative likelihood of uptake of these behaviours by Australian consumers. For this work, we used an Impact-Likelihood Matrix approach, pioneered by BehaviourWorks Australia’s own Dr Sarah Kneebone.