Changing a Nation's Behaviour
Australians waste 7.7 million plates of edible food every day. However, most don't believe they do. In fact, households waste twice as much as they think, costing families $19 billion a year, while one in five Australians struggles to put food on the table.
The problem isn't awareness. It's denial.
The Great Unwaste
The reality is that fixing food waste starts at home, but turning it around takes the whole country. So we rebranded leftovers, scraps, and surplus as 'The Great Unwaste' — a national movement built on a simple, powerful idea: unwasting food saves time, money, and the planet.
Are you wasting more than you think?
The campaign launched across BVOD, digital, radio, print, social, and OOH — meeting people in the exact moments food decisions happen. The central question, "Are you wasting more than you think?", travelled from ABC Breakfast to TikTok.
Bold OOH ran near food retailers. Leftover love spread on Instagram. Minister Tanya Plibersek plated up pasta for lunch — twice. A digital hub gave households, councils, and businesses the tools to act, with hundreds of local governments and industry partners joining the mission. Behaviour-nudging OOH encouraged families to adopt simple habits: plan meals, freeze leftovers. Bite-sized social content drove traffic to the website. A robust PR campaign pulled councils and industry into co-branded initiatives, making The Great Unwaste bigger than an ad campaign.
