John Oliver Goes After The Very Serious Problem Of Food Waste On ‘Last Week Tonight’

Anyone who’s even briefly travelled the US will tell you the same thing: food is pretty cheap. Not because there’s anything that different about the industry or economy or the food itself, but because of the sheer amount of the stuff. Supermarket shelves are overflowing with a million variations of the one product, and if you order a simple plate of pancakes at a diner (and manage to avoid drowning in the deep moat of syrup) you’ll probably be sustained for a week.

But with such a glut of food, you may be surprised to know that around 49.1 million Americans are likely to go hungry at some point in the average year and there aren’t many systems in place to support them. With consumers demanding aesthetically pleasing products, only a portion of produce makes it to US supermarkets; largely inconsequential use-by dates pressure people to throw away goods; and with distributors wary of non-existent lawsuits and not incentivised by the government tax breaks, 40 percent of the nation’s food ends up in the bin.

Naturally — as an opportunity to help those suffering from a confusing and ineffective system and mock Americans for being excessive and gross — John Oliver was all over it:

As with many of the issues Oliver raises in his Last Week Tonight monologues, this isn’t just unique to the US. Food waste is an ongoing problem for Australia too with an estimated 20 percent of our own groceries going straight in the bin (that figure doesn’t include what’s wasted on farms). Though the average Australian personally wastes around 200kg of food per year, there are still around two million who are going hungry.

Importantly, we do have a number of systems in place to help correct this. “Food rescue” organisation OzHarvest collects leftover food from commercial outlets, and nonprofits like Foodbank coordinate charity campaigns and solicit from major corporations in order to feed those in need all around Australia. As a self-described “conduit between the food industry’s surplus food and the welfare sector’s need,” they provide a safer and much more appealing alternative to the growing number of people turning to dumpster diving out the back of Coles. Similarly, supermarkets have started their own campaigns — inspired by those overseas — to endorse the “ugly” fruit and veg that usually doesn’t make it into stores.

However, this mission still has a way to go. When I was 18, I worked at a bakery that would throw away half a dumpster of food each afternoon and bake it all fresh again that night. We were welcome to take home as much as we wanted — but there were only so many icing-laden rolls you could cram in your face before falling seriously ill. Also, once a week a woman would collect the waste to feed animals on her farm — but I don’t know how advisable that is either. Whenever I raised the possibility of giving the rest away to charity, the small franchise owners only ever had two answers: it was too hard, and they weren’t sure of the law.

In NSW, ACT, SA and QLD, the Civil Liabilities Amendment Act ensures business owners the right to donate their surplus food to charitable causes without fear of liability, and in Victoria they are covered by the Food Act. As long as the food is safe for consumption when it leaves the distributor’s possession and you’re not throwing raw and cooked chicken together in hot dank vans, it’s all good.

If you currently work in a bakery or cafe or restaurant thrusting your fists into whole loaves of bread to have Gladiator-style fights with your co-workers each night like I did, it’s probably worth mentioning these other more helpful options to your employers.

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PS. Can we just take a sec to note the running theme Last Week Tonight is now developing. John Oliver: changing the world one hyperactive raccoon impersonation at a time.