Woolworths Food Waste Diversion

Woolworths Food Waste Diversion is a Source Separated Organic Waste project located nationwide across Woolworths' network of supermarkets and distribution centres in Australia. It was registered in July 2016 and operates across an unknown, aggregated area rather than relative to a specific landmark.

Source Separated Organic Waste projects involve separating eligible organic waste at the point of generation and diverting it from landfill to reduce methane emissions. Standard requirements dictate that the waste must be treated using eligible technologies such as open windrow composting, enclosed composting, or anaerobic digestion where biogas is captured and transferred to a combustion device for destruction.

Because the project encompasses an aggregated commercial footprint across the country, it operates across diverse environments. These areas span varied environmental conditions, from high rainfall coastal centres to semi-arid inland towns, and span varied soil types including coastal sandy loam to inland clay. The regional land use associated with the project consists primarily of commercial retail zones where the waste is generated, and peri-urban industrial zones where the composting facilities operate.

This project was set up to actively divert commercial surplus food away from landfills, instead routing it toward hunger relief charities, farmer stock feed, and commercial organic composting. A notable milestone for this initiative is that its Carbon Abatement Contract (CAC497655) with the Clean Energy Regulator, which commenced in November 2016, was successfully completed in June 2024.