Food, waste and our future: a banana infographic sells the sustainability story

There’s little debate that we’re wasting more food than is good for us or the planet. But what can we do about it? Well, we started with the humble banana, created an infographic and things just went from there.

As part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Environment Day focus, Ecocreative helped UNSW Sustainability develop a campaign to raise awareness about food waste, culminating in a Q&A-style debate involving various political, academic and social leaders in a healthy discussion about what’s wrong – and what could be right – about food, waste and our future.

We researched what is going on across the food production, retailing and consumption system, highlighting where food gets wasted and how this can ultimately contribute to climate change, the biggest issue facing us all. Ecocreative linked the amazing waste in western society with bananas, one of the most popular foods on the planet (handily branded with the university's yellow and black livery).

The campaign rolled out across UNSW Sustainability online and on social networks, extending to posters plastered around the University campus. On the night, a giant screen featured a propagandist presentation interspersed with a feed of live tweets and video footage from the panel of speakers. We even helped out on the night, with Matthew drafted in as event manager, with input ranging from speech editing to crowd wrangling.

As an extra quirk, more than 200 organic bananas were marked with dotted lines representing proportions of 'waste' across the banana life story. These were available for people to take home as part of their pledge to consider food waste in their daily habits. The fact that they all got eaten (or went home) is perhaps as good a sign of success as any.

Watch the highlights video of 'Food, waste and our future'