Source: Radio New Zealand
About 237kg of food is thrown away per person, every year. Supplied
More than 120 million tonnes of food is thrown away or wasted in New Zealand every year, a new report has found.
The amount is equivalent to 237 kilograms of waste per person.
Nearly a third of the waste comes from households, with processing and food production making up the remainder.
The report was commissioned by the Ministry for the Environment and is the first-ever attempt to quantify how much is wasted across the entire food chain.
The authors found 18 percent of all food wasted goes to landfill, where it creates methane, one of the gases contributing to climate change.
The total proportion of food wasted is between five and 10 percent, the report said.
That was “considerably lower” than the global estimate fo 30 to 40 percent, but did not take into account food that might be wasted after it was exported.
“New Zealand produces large quantities of food, which is then exported and any waste associated with consuming that food further down the supply chain will occur outside New Zealand, in another country,” the report said.
A huge amount of food wasted was still edible, the research found.
That was especially the case in primary production, where 581 million tonnes (78 percent) of wasted food was still edible, and in wholesale or retail, where 85 percent of food thrown out was edible,
About half the food that households threw out was edible – equivalent to 190 million tonnes a year.
Some councils, including Auckland and Christchurch, have introduced organic food collections in the past few years.
However, the government last year scrapped the requirement for all urban areas to introduce kerbside composting.
The Ministry for the Environment said councils would still be supported to introduce schemes if they wanted to, through the government’s Waste Minimisation Fund.
The fund itself was drastically cut in the 2024 Budget, losing $178 million over four years.
The remaining $30m a year is still available for organic waste diversion projects.
Although households contributed significantly to wasted food, the biggest loss was in primary production, the report found.
A total wastage of 37 percent happened at this point in the chain.
The report found there were opportunities to limit food waste in primary production, but it would mean “changes in consumer expectations” and food-handling systems.
“This needs to be offset against concerns regarding food safety.”
The report found big gaps in the data available.
“Currently there is no information available on food waste in prisons, schools, hotels, and fast-food restaurants and very little information for hospitals, aged care, cafés, and restaurants.”
If data collection improved, the amount of wastage was likely to increase, it said.
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
