Australia wastes about 7.6 million tonnes of food a year — roughly 312kg per person — at a cost of around $36.6 billion to the economy. Retail and wholesale account for 527,000 tonnes of that, or 7%.

Seven per cent sounds like someone else’s problem. It isn’t, for two reasons. Retailers sit at the point where the 32% of waste generated in households gets decided — through range, pack size, pricing and date management. And since 1 July 2026, some Australian retailers have had legal obligations attached to it.

This article covers where Australia’s food waste actually comes from, what changed in NSW this year, the legal difference between “use by” and “best before” that governs what you can mark down, and how the EM Cloud™ Food Date Check module handles it.

Where does Australia’s food waste actually come from?

Most coverage stops at “households are the biggest contributor”, which is true but not useful if you run a store. Here is the full supply chain:

FIAL, National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study, 2021, base year 2018–19. Retail and wholesale are reported as a combined figure — no published Australian source isolates supermarket-only tonnage.

The wider consequences of that 7.6 million tonnes:

• 17.5 million tonnes CO₂-e, about 3.5% of Australia’s national greenhouse gas emissions
• 2,628 gigalitres of water used to grow food that is never eaten — End Food Waste Australia puts that at roughly five Sydney Harbours
• 25.7 million hectares of land, an area larger than Victoria
• $2,000 to $2,500 per household per year, and about 265kg per household

For scale, the UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 found 1.05 billion tonnes of food wasted globally in 2022 — around 19% of all food available to consumers, and more than a billion meals a day.

If retail is only 7%, why should retailers care?

Fair question, and worth answering honestly rather than inflating the number. Three reasons.

First, influence beyond your own bin. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 — the target Australia’s strategy aligns to — is explicitly worded to halve food waste “at the retail and consumer levels”. Range decisions, pack sizes, promotional structures, date labels and markdown timing all shape what happens in the 32% after the customer gets it home.

Second, it is margin. Every unit written off was bought, freighted, handled, refrigerated and then thrown away. Champions 12.3, analysing 1,200 business sites across 17 countries, found every $1 invested in food waste reduction returned $7 to $21 in savings. That is international rather than Australian data, but the direction is not controversial.

Third, and newest: it is becoming a compliance matter.

What changed for NSW retailers on 1 July 2026

Two NSW requirements commenced on 1 July 2026, and both are already in force.

The direction of travel is the point. Food waste is moving from a sustainability talking point to something a retailer has to be able to measure and evidence. Whatever your state, being able to report what you wrote off, what you marked down and what you donated is becoming an operational requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

“Use by” and “best before” are not the same thing legally

This distinction governs what you can and cannot do with stock approaching its date, and it is the foundation of any automated markdown rule.

Both date types are governed by Standard 1.2.5 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. Note the practical implication: a date-driven rule alone is not enough for best-before stock. The date makes it eligible; a quality check makes it saleable.

Consumer confusion between the two is itself a source of waste. RMIT research published with End Food Waste Australia in June 2025 found that poor label design and inconsistent date labelling drive disposal of edible food, and recommended a unified national date labelling framework. End Food Waste Australia projects that clearer date labels and storage advice could help prevent close to a million tonnes of food waste by 2030 — a modelled projection rather than measured waste, but a significant one.

How the EM Cloud™ Food Date Check module works

The Food Date Check module inside EM Cloud™ tracks date-sensitive stock and acts on it before it becomes a write-off rather than after.

• Date capture and visibility. Date-sensitive lines are tracked against their use-by or best-before dates, so approaching stock is a list your team can work rather than something a staff member happens to notice.
• Staged markdowns. Prices reduce as remaining shelf life shortens, so the discount is proportionate to the urgency instead of being a single last-minute cut — or no cut at all.
• Date-type-aware rules. Because use-by and best-before carry different legal consequences, they need to be treated differently in the workflow rather than as one “expiry” field.
• Auto Order. Ordering informed by historical sales and usage reduces the overstock that creates date-sensitive waste in the first place. Not ordering it is cheaper than marking it down.
• Reporting. A record of what was marked down, what was written off and what was donated — which is what the emerging reporting obligations require.

Worth noting that this approach is what the sector itself now recommends. End Food Waste Australia’s Guide to Food Waste Reduction for Australian Retailers (2025) advises retailers to use dynamic pricing models that discount as remaining shelf life diminishes, and digital shelf-edge price tickets to automate markdowns — which is EM Cloud™ Food Date Check working alongside EM ESL.

We should be straight about the evidence, though. There is no robust published Australian figure for how much waste markdown automation prevents. The Australian trials that exist have not published effect sizes. What can be said is that the practice is recommended by the national body, that the ROI evidence on food waste reduction generally is strong, and that the alternative — discovering the problem at write-off — has a known cost.

Australia’s 2030 target, and where things actually stand

Australia’s National Food Waste Strategy, published in 2017, aims to halve national food waste by 2030, aligning with UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3.

Is Australia on track? There is no published government assessment answering that question — we looked. Globally, Champions 12.3’s 2025 progress report concluded the world is not on track and called for a radical rethink. Australia is not named in it.

The most encouraging Australian evidence comes from the Australian Food Pact. End Food Waste Australia reported that across 2022 to 2024, its 26 signatories achieved a 13% reduction in food waste, $57 million saved, 254 million meals donated and a 59% reduction in food waste sent to landfill. The Pact now covers around 83% of the Australian supermarket sector.

That is genuine progress from the businesses that opted in. It also shows what is achievable, which makes the absence of a national progress assessment more conspicuous rather than less.

For independent retailers, there is a straightforward version of all this. Around 70% of the food Australia wastes is still edible. Some of it is sitting in your chillers with four days left on it. Whether it sells, gets donated or gets thrown out is decided by whether anyone knows it is there in time.

Sources

• DCCEEW — Reducing Australia’s food waste
• DCCEEW — National Food Waste Strategy (2017)
• End Food Waste Australia — Fact Library
• End Food Waste Australia — Guide to Food Waste Reduction for Australian Retailers (2025)
• End Food Waste Australia — Annual Report 2024–25
• NSW Food Authority — Date marks and storage
• NSW EPA — FOGO mandates and rollout
• RMIT University — Confusing food labels research (June 2025)
• Champions 12.3 — SDG Target 12.3 Progress Report (2025)
• UNEP — Food Waste Index Report 2024
• Foodbank Australia / Harvard FLPC — Food Donation Law and Policy: Australia Legal Guide (2022)