Canberrans buy more groceries and fast food than they need and throw so much of it out they have the distinction of being the most wasteful Australians.
ACT No Waste's most recent kerbside rubbish audit showed the amount of food and compostables in each household's weekly garbage had soared to fill almost half a green garbage bin.
In the November 2007 study, homes were found to discard 4.2kg of food waste every week, up from 3.7kg in March/April 2004, an increase that acting Minister for Territory and Municipal Services Andrew Barr yesterday described as "alarming".
"It would not only suggest we are putting more strain on our environment than we should, but would also suggest that in times of high cost of living we are not being as smart with our money as perhaps we could be," Mr Barr said.
The figures showed food waste made up 48.5 per cent of a green bin's content by weight, a stark rise from 2004's 41.7 per cent.
"We all need to think about how much food we throw out and try to come up with ways that we can reduce our waste," Mr Barr said.
The manager of No Waste, Chris Horsey, said the ACT was the leader - or loser - nationally.
"We're the worst, we generate more waste than any other city," Mr Horsey said.
Food waste in the ACT every year is the equivalent of 4450 truck loads.
"Last financial year we sent 197,000 tonnes of waste to landfill, this year we think it's going to be 213,000. We're going backwards," Mr Horsey said.
The territory generates more than two tonnes of waste per person a year, the highest rate in Australia.
But the amount of food that ends up in the rubbish was the most unfathomable consequence of affluence, and the problem started at supermarkets, take-away outlets and other food retailers, not at the bin.
"Waste avoidance is the hardest end of what we do and it is very difficult to control people's consumption and consumer habits,'' Mr Horsey said.
Founder of Planet Ark Jon Dee was so alarmed by the growing mounds of landfill that he is forming a coalition of local government waste experts, food educators, environmentalists and producers to devise strategies for stopping the rot.
"This is a very conservative estimate: we throw away at least 20 per cent of the food that we buy, it could be high as 25 per cent,'' Mr Dee, who will launch the National Food Waste Campaign next month, said.
For every five shopping bags full of groceries, the content of one was thrown away, and Mr Dee said the most discarded product was bread.
"For the average family, if you want to know how much money you're wasting on a personal household level just look at how much you spend on food every week and on average you're wasting at least a fifth of that."
According to Consuming Australia, a 2007 report by the Australian Conservation Foundation, at least $10.5 billion was spent nationally each year on things that were not used, including about $5.3 billion on wasted food.