War on Waste

She's also the director of the Circular Economy and Waste Program at the Australia Institute.

and was featured on ABC TV's award-winning environmental series, War on Waste.

Nina is often in the news as an expert on the sustainable fashion and circular economy sectors.

She works with media, councils, organisations, schools, community groups and individuals to develop strategies for systems change towards a holistic, circular and sustainable fashion future.

It's often a matter of where that food is produced, right? And then a question of supply chains as well and wastage, right? So in many high-income countries where we produce enough food, a lot of The water, the time, the energy that goes into producing food is lost through waste.

The ABC did a great program a few years ago, War on Waste, I'm pretty sure it was called, and they looked at some of the cosmetic standards that supermarkets have around fruit and vegetable in particular, and a perfectly good piece of fruit won't make it to the shelf and actually will be disposed of because of its cosmetic, you know, insufficiencies, I guess.

So in the high income world, we tend to lose a lot of food to wastage at the farm because of these cosmetic, or I should say early on in the supply chain because of these cosmetic issues.

But then also after the point of sale, you know, like how many times have people like you gone to the shops and bought all these vegetables with the hope that you're going to eat them all.

And you did, in fact, become the cool kid on the block.

Four years, Ben, after you founded the company, it was catapulted somewhat into the national conversation after Craig Rewcastle's ABC television show, War on Waste, came on the air.

And after that, sales skyrocketed.

Before that, did you have any idea that the show would have that kind of effect?

So you might on an earnings basis, you probably are growing your profit, but you just take it.

And you spend it on investment in products and tools and people.

And with the war on waste, Ben, was it like an overnight thing where you were like, oh, wow, we are seeing immediate results here?

Yeah, it was.