Woolworths Food Waste Diversion

Woolworths Food Waste Diversion is a source separated organic waste project operating nationwide across Australia, rather than at a single fixed geographic location. It was registered in July 2016. Because it is an aggregated commercial waste project spanning multiple Woolworths supermarket stores and waste processing facilities, traditional project area measurements and rural land uses do not apply. Instead, the project activities are situated within various urban, peri-urban, and commercial environments across the country. Similarly, specific environmental conditions like typical regional rainfall classifications and natural soil types (such as basalt or clay) are strictly inapplicable to this nationwide waste management initiative.

Source separated organic waste projects under the Carbon Farming Initiative involve separating eligible organic materials at the point of generation and actively diverting them from traditional landfill streams. For this project, diverted waste is transferred to specialized treatment facilities utilizing open windrow composting, enclosed composting, or anaerobic digestion technologies. If anaerobic digestion is used, the resulting biogas is transferred to a combustion device and destroyed. This methodology generates Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) by significantly reducing the amount of greenhouse gas, specifically methane, that would otherwise be generated by decomposing organics in landfills.

This carbon project ties directly into Woolworths Group Limited’s broader sustainability commitments to tackle Australia's food waste problem. In addition to utilizing commercial composting, Woolworths diverts surplus food by partnering with charities such as OzHarvest, Fareshare, and Foodbank for hunger relief, and by providing surplus edible food as stock feed to farmers. The carbon project was contracted to the Commonwealth in November 2016 under contract CAC497655. It successfully delivered 88,675 ACCUs against its fixed delivery obligations before the contract was officially completed on June 26, 2024.