PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets
Food waste measurement in Australian hospitals and residential aged care homes
Provisionally accepted
- 1The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
- 2The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
- 3Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
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Food waste in Australian hospitals and Residential Aged Care Homes (RACH) poses a significant challenge to building a national sustainable food system. These settings generate substantial amounts of food waste due to the complex interaction between patient and resident needs, foodservice operations, staff behaviour and attitudes, food safety regulations and nutrition policies. Measuring food waste is essential to establish baseline waste metrics, guide targeted reduction strategies and evaluate the success of waste reduction efforts in meeting Australia's national strategy to halve food waste by 2030. Integrating food waste measurement in hospitals and RACH can reduce waste and provide positive environmental and financial outcomes. However, measurement practices in these settings currently use labour-intensive methods, often lacking digital integration, and are conducted ad-hoc as quality improvement activities. Overarching hospital and RACH policy in Australia governing the quality of food and nutrition care is improving and may support further enhancements in waste measurement, waste management and waste reduction. Nonetheless, individual hospitals and RACH foodservices remain responsible for driving change. There is an urgent need to improve food waste measuring practices in these Australian settings to achieve significant reductions in food waste.
Keywords: Food waste, Hospital, aged care, Foodservice, sustainability, Australia
Received: 29 Sep 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cook, Sansome, Bartrim and Collins. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nathan Cook, n.cook1@uq.edu.au
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