Designing out food waste at Melbourne Design Week

Published: 5 May 2021
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The event ‘Designing our future using the ‘waste’ of the past' was the third in a series of food waste events that the Circular Economy Business Innovation Centre hosted. It was held as part of the Melbourne Design Week and delivered in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria.

Attendees both in-person and online explored how ‘designing out waste’ can help Victoria meet its target of halving food waste by 2030.

Our MC and host for the night, Matt Wicking creatively held the space for the audience to imagine what 2030 could be. Setting the scene with the story of being on a cruise ship at sea with climate scientists on board and the challenges that we face as a collective around climate change and food waste.

Matt led conversations with local food-focused designers and innovators to discuss how to bring Victoria’s zero-waste future into the present and inspire others to eliminate food waste through design. Solutions included: eliminating avoidable food waste and transforming unavoidable food waste through re-designing into new products and re-thinking our food supply chains.

Our speakers were:

Jordy and Julia Kay, founders of Great Wrap

Matthew Kronberg, founder, and CEO of Grainstone

Kate Dundas, Director of Strategic Foresight and Research, Sustainability Victoria

The speakers shared their vision of how to halve food waste by 2030.

Final summary highlights

The final advice and insights of the panel speakers about what businesses and individuals can do to get on to the path to food waste reduction by 2030 included:

There are people with great innovations over here and others with great business skills – we need to link those up.

Everyone has skills they can use to solve environmental problems.

Everything has been designed; we can redesign everything – every small decision we make can get us towards our desired future. The accumulation of all our little decisions will have an impact.

Food consumption trends are moving towards healthy, sustainable trends – jump on board!

To reach your goals, you will need to ask embarrassing questions and look and feel awkward – be okay with that.

See what was discussed

This illustration was done in real-time to capture key ideas and insights raised at the event.

Illustration of Melbourne Design Week event recap © Copyright Rasalila Humphrey

Relive the event

Watch the full recording of the event below.

Logo: Melbourne Design Week