How to avoid food wastage

The results of a year-long investigation by the Environment Select Committee into New Zealand’s food waste problem will soon be before Parliament. In the meantime, individuals are taking matters into their own hands. Kelly Dennett reports.

‘‘It’s a very privileged position to be in, when you can afford to not eat everything,’’ food systems expert Emily King says.

In King’s Waiheke Island backyard, chickens roam near the vege garden. Peek into her cupboards and rather than a hodge-podge of food packaging, clear jars with dry stocks are front, centre and labelled.

The director of Spira helps businesses and organisations better understand their food systems to avoid waste, and King was named a global food leader by Food Tank in 2017.

The former environmental lawyer practises what she preaches. Her home is a zero food waste zone. King plans meals for the week so her family doesn’t need to buy more than they need. Her jarred dry foods ensure she knows the inventory of her kitchen, so there’s no doubling up, and she can make use of anything that’s about to go off. She grows her own veges, and scraps are either composted or fed to the chickens.

She says we can be more ambitious about our individual waste and aim for zero.

‘‘It’s time for us to really be more conscious of the impact of our food systems on the environment because it’s one way we can be doing better. It’s an easy way to make a difference,’’ she says.

While plastic has become the emblem of a wasteful society, its existence intertwined with a planet that is doomed to climate change, Kiwis throwing out tonnes of potato peel, broccoli stalks, meat offcuts and mouldy bread, are contributing to our carbon problem.

Figures from studies vary, but around a third of New Zealand’s food, variously estimated at being worth somewhere between $800m and $2b, is dumped into landfill. When it’s dumped, it gets buried; and food without oxygen releases methane.

Ministry for the Environment figures suggest in the 2016 calendar year, 571,000 tonnes of food waste was dumped in landfills by businesses and households. According to data from the National Food Waste Prevention Project, held between 2014 and 2015, 229,002 tonnes of food were being sent to landfill through kerbside collections.

The ministry estimated for every tonne of food chucked in landfill, almost 0.33 tonnes of CO2equivalent greenhouse gasses were generated.

The waste isn’t just in the food – meat and vegetable production uses water, electricity, labour and transport resources. Anyone who has attempted to grow veges, only to see it eaten by a bird or wasted in the fridge, will know the pain.

According to a Love Food Hate Waste project, bread, oranges and mandarins, potatoes, beef, cakes and leftovers are the most chucked items. The average family is dumping 73kg, or $563 worth of food, every year.

The country’s food wastage issue was considered so urgent that the Environment Select Committee launched a review in August 2018, looking at prevention. It invited submissions from councils, supermarket groups, waste minimisation groups, even the New Zealand Defence Force.

Independent specialist adviser Miranda Mirosa, a University of Otago associate professor, was in June appointed to analyse the submissions and make a report with recommendations to the committee. Committee chair Duncan Webb says the final briefing was nearly ready to be presented to Parliament, and the public, in about a month’s time.

Select committee member and Labour MP Angie Warren-Clark is perhaps the most enthusiastic member of the panel (‘‘Did you know if food waste was a country it would be the third largest emitter behind China and the USA?’’ she asks in one email), owing to her time working with Tauranga Women’s Refuge, which was a food rescue recipient. Being on the receiving end ‘‘revolutionised’’ its service delivery.

‘‘So when I came to Parliament I wanted to see if there were other opportunities in the food chain to reduce waste and hunger,’’ she says.

To Warren-Clark, a New Zealand with zero food waste must be addressed through the entire food

chain – from the tonnes of hail-damaged fruit or over-planted crops, to manufacturing, supermarkets, food industry practices and purchasing models, to consumption trends and consumer preferences. Ideally, she said, everyone would have worm farms or composts, and food waste would be picked up by councils across the country.

In her own household she uses beeswax wraps and Tupperware for food storage (‘‘I’m a reformed Tupperware addict’’), ignores best-before food labels (‘‘I sniff my milk, lol!’’), shops once every three weeks or so (though she travels frequently), and throws old fruit and bread into the freezer. Meals are sometimes put together from a ‘‘what’s in the fridge?’’ dive. She cooks the entire broccoli,

including the stalk, buys fresh, in-season and local, and isn’t fussy about ugly fruit and vegetables. ‘‘A wonky carrot still tastes the same.’’

A canvas of the submissions made to the committee reveal organisations deeply concerned with the issue. Dunedin District Council’s senior strategy officer for waste solutions, Catherine Irvine, was specific in pinpointing Kiwis’ wastage habits: supermarkets were reluctant to sell ugly fruit, fewer people were eating unattractive meat cuts, like offal, households had only basic cooking skills, eateries were serving meals that were too large and weren’t promoting doggy bags, and restaurant meal garnishes often went uneaten.

Auckland Council’s 17-page brief said a recent survey revealed half of Aucklanders admitted

‘‘Did you know if food waste was a country it would be the third largest emitter behind China and the USA?’’ Email from Angie Warren-Clark