Three hundred kilos.
Per person.
Per year.
That's how much food the average Australian throws away every year. Enough to fill the MCG nine times over as a country. We're trying to change that.
AUSTRALIA, BY THE NUMBERS
The scale is hard to imagine.
Of food wasted every year in Australia
Source: DCCEEW
Of CO₂-equivalent emissions from food waste
Source: Foodbank Australia
Cost to the Australian economy each year
Source: DCCEEW
Of wasted food is still perfectly edible
Source: Foodbank Australia
For context: 7.6 million tonnes is enough to fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground nine times — or 16,000 Olympic swimming pools — every single year.
WHERE IT HAPPENS
It's not just one place.
Food waste happens at every step of the supply chain — from farms to households. Two parts of the chain are where ResQBox can help most.
33%
of all Australian food waste comes from households
Our kitchens
Australian households throw away 2.5 million tonnes of food every year. The average family bins between $2,500 and $3,800 worth of food annually — equivalent to a full year's electricity bill.
Source: FIAL National Food Waste Strategy Feasibility Study, Foodbank Australia.
16%
comes from restaurants, cafes, and catering
Our kitchens, professionally
The hospitality industry generates roughly 1.2 million tonnes of food waste a year — enough to fill the MCG one and a half times. Restaurants, cafes, hotels, and caterers all face the same problem: unpredictable demand at the end of every service.
Source: End Food Waste Australia, Ordermentum.
ResQBox connects the two — turning hospitality surplus into household savings before it ever reaches a bin.
THE CLIMATE COST
“If global food waste were a country, it would be the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — after the United States and China.”
Food waste in Australia generates 17.5 million tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions every year — about 3% of the country's total greenhouse gas footprint.
When food rots in landfill, it releases methane — a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Most household food waste in Australia ends up exactly there.
Eliminating global food waste would save 4.4 billion tonnes of CO₂ a year — roughly the equivalent of taking one in four cars off the road.
Sources: Foodbank Australia, OzHarvest, IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, UN Environment Programme.
GLOBAL CONTEXT
We waste more than anyone else.
On a per-person basis, Australia is the highest-wasting major nation in the world.
AUSTRALIA
102 kg
kg/person/yr
China
64 kg
kg/person/yr
United States
59 kg
kg/person/yr
India
50 kg
kg/person/yr
Russia
33 kg
kg/person/yr
That's down from 127 kg per person in 2017 — real progress. But still nearly double what the next-worst country wastes.
The 102 kg figure is the food-waste-to-landfill subset of Australia's broader 300 kg per-person total — and still the highest of any major nation.
Sources: National Waste and Resource Recovery data, FIAL benchmarking, comparative international landfill rate data.
PER BOX, ON AVERAGE
What one rescued meal does.
Each box is small. The arithmetic is real.
~1.5 kg
of food saved from landfill
A typical Mystery Box contains a meal or two for one or two people — food that would have gone in the bin at end of service.
~3.5 kg
of CO₂-equivalent emissions avoided
Based on industry averages for prepared meal weight and emissions, every box keeps a small but real amount of methane out of the atmosphere.
~85%
of every dollar back to the kitchen
After our 15% commission, the rest stays with the restaurant that made the food. Every box helps keep an independent kitchen open another month.
All figures are conservative estimates based on industry-average meal weights, food-waste emission factors, and our own commission structure. Real impact varies by box, restaurant, and food type. We'll update with verified ResQBox-specific numbers as we publish our first impact report.
HONEST FRAMING
We won't end food waste alone.
Food waste is a vast, multi-stage problem. Farms, processors, distributors, retailers, restaurants, and households all play a part. No single platform — including ours — is going to solve it on its own.
ResQBox is one piece of the answer. We connect surplus food at the end of the hospitality chain with people who'll eat it before it becomes waste. That's a small slice of a 7.6 million tonne problem.
But it's a slice that didn't have a good answer until apps like ours existed. And every box rescued is one that actually didn't go in the bin. We're committed to publishing real impact numbers as we grow — not estimates, real ones.
BE PART OF IT
Every rescued meal is a small win.
Whether you eat or you cook — ResQBox is one tap away.
Eat with us
Cook with us
Seven point six million tonnes is a staggering number.
Every meal we rescue is one less.