Blog 1 “Food Waste Wednesday”
It’s Food Waste Wednesday! Check out our first blog review as part of a summary of the Food Waste Summit by Robyn Zink.
Last week I got to listen in to a Food Waste Summit organised by WasteMinz and NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3.
Kaitlin Dawson, from NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3, opened the summit by arguing that we don’t
waste food because we are lazy or lack education.
The two main reasons we waste food is because:
1. Food waste is costed into our food system. It is a hidden or sunken cost. Because we have
already paid for the food when we get it home, we don’t see the cost of the food we are
wasting (which is 20% of the average household food budget). She asked us to think about
what would happen if there was a line item in business and household budgets for food
waste?
2. Where food is valued, it is not wasted. Many people don’t have any experience of growing
or processing the food they eat, they don’t know where the ingredients come from or who
was involved in growing the food, the conditions they work under and the environmental
impact of that food. We need to reconnect with growing food and learning to value food.
Kaitlin talked about all the resources that are lost because of food waste, including the soil, water,
fossil fuels in fertilisers, growing, processing and transport. She also broke down the emissions that
are produced across the life of a loaf of bread. Wasting food is not just about wasting money; it is
also about creating unnecessary emssions.
But things are changing. Kaitlin gave the example of many European countries where landfill is no
longer an option for food waste. The priority is getting food to people. Data and coalitions of
organisations working together across the whole food ecosystem is reducing the food wasted at all
stages across the life of food items.
She left us with the challenge to change our thinking to “Consider what the food was meant to be,
not the waste it became”.
Find out more about the work NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3 does here.
Kaitlin Dawson – Food Waste Champions 12.3 - NZs Food Waste Progress, Gaps and Pathway Forward
