Mark Barthel
Special Advisor, Fight Food Waste CRC and Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL)
Mark joined the Fight Food Waste CRC team as a Special Advisor in August 2019 having moved from the UK to Australia. In addition to his CRC role, where he is leading the development of a Food Waste Reduction Roadmap with Woolworths, he is supporting FIAL and the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment in the implementation of Australia’s National Food Waste Strategy.
Mark has a successful 25-year track record of driving sustainable innovation and circular thinking in agri-food, injecting fresh thinking, creating new business opportunities and markets, at the same time as improving food chain resilience, intelligence, collaboration and transparency.
Mark has been directly involved in developing the international evidence base for food loss and waste, with over 15 years’ experience of quantifying and preventing food loss and waste in the UK, Europe, North and South America, Africa and Australia. In the process, Mark has supported the creation of national and corporate food waste baselines (volumetric, compositional and behavioural) and developed frameworks to facilitate the annual tracking of progress to reduce food waste at the corporate, sectoral and national levels.
Mark has also helped establish world-leading voluntary agreements between the public and private sector to reduce food waste and food insecurity and drive product and packaging innovation, including the world renowned UK
Courtauld Commitment , and has run award-winning behaviour change campaigns, like
Love Food Hate Waste , which is being used in a growing number of countries, states and cities, including four Australian States.
Throughout his career, Mark has worked with the senior teams of some of the largest food and grocery businesses in the world, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, M&S, Cooperative Food, Walmart, Woolworths, Goodman Fielder, Lion, Nestle and Danone. He has led more than 50 product and packaging research and innovation projects with food and drink companies, many of them focusing on improving sustainability performance, supporting consumer behaviour change and reducing food waste.