Neil Perry: Taking our food from farm to table, then back to farm

Celebrity chef Neil Perry has been preaching sustainability for most of his career.

Neil Perry. Picture: Jane Dempster

Celebrity chef Neil Perry has been preaching sustainability for most of his career.

The founder of Rockpool, Spice Temple and ­Rosetta says caring for the environment grew naturally from his interest in the ingredients with which he cooked.

“Why I’ve embraced sustainability is because chefs really take the best of the sea and the earth,” said Perry. “So if we don’t look after those two things, we’re in ­serious trouble.”

Perry is spearheading the launch of Australia’s first network connecting food businesses with industrial composters, who in turn will transform restaurant waste into compost before being sold to farmers or consumers.

He’s signed up his new restaurant Margaret in Sydney’s Double Bay, slated to open in June, for Compost Connect, which he said works like Airtasker but for food waste, allowing businesses to find online collectors and composters. “I was lucky to be working with composters before in Melbourne, so this is just a natural step.”

Australia’s food service industry creates about one million ­tonnes of organic waste a year, while food rotting in landfill produces more than 5 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The network was developed with the assistance of a $400,000 federal government grant and ­Assistant ­Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management Trevor Evans said it was an excellent example of an innovative recycling scheme.

“We are moving the dial in ­Australia as we change our mindsets to thinking about waste as a resource so that we achieve better outcomes for our environment,” Mr Evans said.

“The scheme is part of the Morrison government’s drive to back innovative recycling schemes that put the power of recycling into the hands of businesses and consumers, to deliver a more sustainable Australia”.

All states and territories have agreed to halve the amount of ­organic waste sent to landfill by 2030 under the National Waste Action plan, which if achieved would see 2.7 million tonnes less going to landfill each year.

Compost Connect board member and BioPak CEO Gary Smith said composting services usually cost about the same as standard rubbish collection services, with the added ­benefit of supporting the nation’s primary producers.

“So there’s a cost saving for them (businesses), there’s an environmental service for them and they’re supporting their own industry by recycling that organic waste back to the farmers,” he said.

Australian ­Organics Recycling Association executive officer Peter Olah said just over half of the nation’s food waste was recycled.