Let me tell you about the most expensive rubbish bin in Australia.

This week, I did something I'd never done before: I calculated exactly how much money I throw away. I collected my grocery receipts, summoned the courage to start a process I knew would end up in a newsletter read by 200,000 people, and tracked every apple that went brown, every lettuce leaf that wilted, every leftover that turned into a science experiment because one meeting turned into four.

The result? I'd thrown away $43 worth of food. In one week.

Multiply that by 52 weeks, and I'm looking at over $2,200 annually. That's a holiday. A laptop. This basketball shoe signed by NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal.

Instead, it's sitting in my bin, smelling just as bad as what I imagine Shaq’s shoe smelt like post-game.

I'm not unusual. When you take a look at Australia’s relationship with food waste, I'm not even particularly wasteful. We're all participating in what might be the country's most overlooked economic inefficiency, and it’s worth discussing.

Just before we dive in, a quick note: Today's newsletter is sponsored by Harris Farm, but they've not provided any input on the content I've written here.

According to the latest National Waste and Resource Recovery Report, Australians generated about 14.6 million tonnes of organic waste in the 2022-23 financial year. Of that, about half (7.6 million tonnes) is food organics and garden organics (known as FOGO). That's approximately 250kg per person.

What are the most wasted foods? Fruit and vegetables, which account for about three million tonnes of that. The vast majority of it does not, as I initially thought, come from wholesalers, supermarkets, or restaurants - it comes from households, and it’s costing the Australian economy approximately $36.6 billion each year.

Here’s the kicker: 70% of the fruit and vegetables we throw out are perfectly edible.

There are plenty of reasons why this should make us all pay attention.

There’s the food security angle (according to End Food Waste, one in five Australians goes hungry regularly, yet we’re wasting enough food to feed 75 million people). Or the climate argument (all that wasted food took energy, water, land and fuel to produce and distribute, and the wasted food itself produces enormous amounts of greenhouse gases rotting in landfill - 8.5% of Australia’s total emissions, in fact). If you think about the economics of it, it’s simply a waste of our money that we spent on buying the stuff that went off in the bottom drawer.

Whatever way you cut (or peel) it, my $2,200 annual food waste bill represents time, effort, and resources that could have been used elsewhere. But there's a broader story here about how we think about food and value.

The rise of "imperfect" produce movements reflects a growing awareness that our aesthetic standards for food might be part of the problem. Perfectly good vegetables get rejected because they don't look H-O-T-T-O-G-O.

Understanding why we waste food - and money - is crucial to stopping it. There’s a whole range of factors - overpurchasing (buying more than we can realistically use), confusion about use-by dates, and the aspiration gap (buying ingredients for meals we plan to cook but never quite get around to).

But our aesthetic standards have a lot to answer for. We've been conditioned to expect flawless produce, but nature doesn't work that way. A slightly wonky carrot or a banana with a few spots is often perfectly nutritious and delicious - it just doesn't look like a Renaissance painting sitting in the fruit bowl.

According to a 2021 study from Food Innovation Australia, over 50% of citrus produce is rejected by consumers because of appearance, minor blemishes or size. Pretty wild considering we don’t even eat citrus skin anyway.

The good news is that solutions are emerging at every level. Australia’s National Food Waste Strategy outlines the strategies the federal government and a range of agencies are employing to encourage us to waste less - and the goal is to cut waste in half by 2030. Local councils are expanding organics collection services, and businesses are finding innovative ways to redirect surplus food via organisations like OzHarvest and FoodBank. Friends of TDA at The Untitled Group have even invented a line of vodka made only with imperfect apples from Victoria’s Goulburn Valley (cheekily called Ugly Vodka).

But perhaps the most promising development is the shift in consumer attitudes. Programs that celebrate "imperfect" produce aren't just about reducing waste - they're about changing how we think about food value. When we buy that slightly irregular apple or the day-old bread, we're participating in a more circular economy. As more major grocery stores adopt this model, it will become a more accepted - and even welcome - part of how we shop.

Food waste is a problem that touches on everything from climate change to food security to household budgets. We often find that individual action in the context of the stories we report can feel unachievable or overwhelming. In this case, it’s simple. Every time we choose to use up what we have, buy imperfect produce, or compost our scraps, we're contributing to a more sustainable food system and keeping money in our pockets for those extraordinarily large basketball shoes.

The goal isn't perfection - it's progress.

Harris Farm has just hit a milestone worth celebrating - 50 million kilos of Imperfect Picks sold.

These aren't inferior products; they're perfectly good fruit and vegetables that happen to be a bit wonky, oversized, or cosmetically different. Selling Imperfect Picks reduces waste, supports farmers by providing an outlet for produce that might otherwise be discarded, and saves you up to 50% on your grocery bill.

When you choose Imperfect Picks, you're not just saving money - you're participating in a movement that challenges our assumptions about what food should look like. Sometimes the best solutions are hiding in plain sight, looking a little different than we expected.

To celebrate this tremendous achievement, Harris Farm is giving you 50% off your first Imperfect Picks box* with the code TDAIMPERFECT (offer ends on Thursday, July 17). 

^{* Minimum grocery spend of $50 required to enable code at checkout.}