---

This ambitious target involves the year-on-year reduction in tonnes of food waste going to landfill. We’ll do this by reducing stock loss, improving store waste management, and improving the effectiveness of our farmers' program and food rescue program.

We are constantly implementing new strategies to reduce food waste. Although we’ve made impressive progress and we lead the domestic market, each year sees us send around 52,000 tonnes of food waste to landfill at a cost of $13 million.

Currently, 91% of stores have a food waste diversion program that successfully diverts 60,500 tonnes of food each year. However, it was recently highlighted that 49% of the volume in a general waste bin consists of savable food. To fix this, we are not only focusing on our supermarkets, but also our end‑to‑end supply chains, where there is still $8 billion of food waste each year.

Some strategies we have implemented so far include:

• Improving back-of-house source separation with the rollout of colour coded bins.
• Extending our Odd Bunch range, which currently sells around 50,000 tonnes each year.
• Providing the equivalent of eight million meals to food rescue programs every year.
• Farmers are collecting produce and bakery goods from over 500 stores to be used as feed for animals.
• Introducing the Jamie Oliver ‘Leftovers to Makeover’ Christmas campaign.
• Improving reporting capability so we can see where we need to change for the better.
• Continuing to strengthen our relationships with food rescue organisations.

By partnering with OzHarvest, Foodbank, and other food rescue organisations, we are helping reduce food waste in Australia. The launch of The Odd Bunch saw local Aussie farmers cut their waste down too, as their once unused products are now being offered as cheaper alternatives at our stores across the country. As a result, we are seeing many Aussie families enjoying quality, healthy, and affordable food that was once wasted.

Woolworths’ ambassador, Jamie Oliver, raised awareness of the disturbing amount of food wasted in Australia at a media event at our Food Innovation Centre. He captured public attention and put the spotlight on the changes we are making about food waste.

TOTAL FOOD RELIEF DIVERTED TO THOSE IN NEED ¹

1  The ratio of rescued food to number of meals is based on a 500g meal size, as agreed at the SVA Food Forum.

---

To play our part in reducing plastic bag use, we will remove single-use plastic bags across Woolworths Group nationwide – including Woolworths Supermarkets and Metro stores, BIG W, BWS and Online. Dan Murphy’s and Cellarmasters are already single-use plastic bag free.

The phased approach will begin shortly, with the aim to have it in place across the entire Woolworths Group in Australia by the end of FY18. This will see us cut the number of single-use plastic bags we distribute by 3.2 billion each year.

We will continue to provide our customers with a range of alternative shopping bag options across stores, and will offer thicker, reusable versions at different prices to suit our customers.

---

When we design the packaging for Woolworths own brand products, we try to use our packaging as efficiently as possible and assess each new product against a list of sustainability criteria. The own brand Sustainable Packaging Guidelines have been updated in 2017 as part of the continued focus to improve their sustainability – the improved guidelines will be implemented in early FY18.

In December 2016 we changed the packaging format and reduced the amount of plastic packaging for potato and pasta salads by 120 tonnes.