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.
Armed with these insights from our research to understand ‘Which Behaviours Matter?’, OzHarvest developed the Use-It-Up campaign to drive the following behaviours in Australian households:
Thus, came the development of the Use-It-Up™ Tape.
To get the nation on board and inspire behaviour change, OzHarvest worked with creative agency R/GA to design a new product to make it easy for people to waste less at home. The Use-It-Up™ Tape helps you see what food needs using up by marking out a shelf or space in your fridge, freezer or pantry.
We studied the behaviours and activities of several hundred families across Australia who agreed to participate in our trials to use the Use-It-Up™ Tape in their daily lives. The research included:
The online surveys followed a structured food waste estimation process developed and validated by similar studies in Europe and the United States. 361 households completed the pre-survey, while 145 completed the post survey. 75 people completed both surveys.
The video diaries research was funded by the Western Australian Waste Authority as part of their WasteSorted initiative and enabled a rich exploration of the different ways Use-It-Up™ Tape was actually used by households.
Online survey results
Video diary results
The Tape supported behaviour change by:
I LOVE the tape and the flexibility of it - I have a big family so need a whole shelf when someone else would probably just put on specific items. It made me far more conscious of the food that needed using up and far less inclined to buy more before the fridge had emptied out
These outstanding results from the trials show that the adoption of one simple behaviour can have a great impact in reducing food waste. To continue their efforts to encourage Australians to get onboard to fight food waste, OzHarvest continues to run the nation-wide campaign and distribution of Use It Up tape to embed the behaviour with households across the country.
