He taonga te kai – an Aotearoa where food is valued not wasted

Abstract

Food waste is a significant problem in Aotearoa New Zealand. It puts unnecessary pressure on our environment, it creates emissions, it contributes to food poverty, and it is a lost economic opportunity. What we need to do is to stop accepting waste generation as a necessary ingrained part of our production and consumption systems. Rather we need to think boldly about creating a whole menu of solutions to reduce food waste. This paper overviews what we know about food waste at each stage of the supply chain, providing both an overview of quantities and drivers of waste, before presenting key actions and recommendations for change. A call is made to NZ's economic society for research demonstrating the business case for food waste reduction, at a national, regional, and business level, to help spur investment in this crucial area. Likewise, economic analyses that show which potential solutions yield the highest overall economic impact are also encouraged.

KEYWORDS:

• Food waste
• food loss
• sustainability
• food security
• Aotearoa New Zealand

1. Introduction

Globally, an estimated 40% of all food produced is wasted from farm to fork (WWF, 2021), with concerning environmental, social, and economic consequences. For example, landfilled food waste produces 10% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (UNEP, 2021) and at least 4% of New Zealand's (NZ) emissions (MfE, 2022), which is why reducing food waste is widely considered one of the greatest solutions to climate change. To address this, governments, organisations and companies worldwide are rallying behind the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3, to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 (UN, 2022). In NZ, the Food Waste Champions 12.3 Charitable Trust, consisting of representatives from across the food supply chain committed to this goal, is the key coordinating body providing advocacy and impetus for change. Food waste occurs at all stages across the supply chain because of a multitude of issues, thus requiring a range of technical and social solutions. This paper steps through the supply chain, from farm to fork, providing an overview of what we know about food waste quantities and drivers of waste, before presenting key actions and recommendations for change.

2. Production waste

NZ doesn't yet have a national definition for food waste, nor baseline whole supply chain data (though both are on the way in 2023), so short of having our own, we can look at Australia's waste profile to get a rough indication of waste at each stage of the supply chain given some similarities between our agriculturally based, export-orientated food systems. The latest data from Australia indicates that the on-farm/production stage is the second biggest contributor generating about 22% of total supply chain waste (FIAL, 2021). Direct drivers of waste on farms include biological and environmental factors that damage or spoil crops. There is also a range of agronomy, animal husbandry and fishing practices that can result in waste. Another important driver for waste in the sector in NZ over the last few Covid-ridden years has been labour shortages. These causes – direct causes of waste generally require technological, financial, and educational interventions. Importantly, however, food waste not only occurs due to a lack of technology, finance, and education, but also due to social relationships and an imbalance in power between farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers. Supply chain stakeholders are sometimes locked into practices that cause FW to occur, where FW generation is an outcome of avoiding risks and/or hedging against uncertainty. This means that often the drivers observed for waste occurring on-farm are induced by the processor and retailer, so it is important not to automatically jump to ‘blaming’ the farmer for waste (O’Connor, Mirosa, Bremer, Skeaff, & Lucci, forthcoming).

Much of the waste occurring on farms is avoidable and, therefore, should be fed first and foremost to people. A report (Feedback, 2020) showed that compared to using food waste as animal feed (which saves on average three times more emissions than sending it to anaerobic digestion), preventing the waste in the first place saves nine times more emissions. Therefore, efforts must focus on prioritising FW prevention and reduction over simply diverting it to ‘less harmful’ destinations than landfill. Changing producer behaviour is made complex however by the fact that there are often situations where the costs of avoiding FW are larger than the cost of cleaning up the food waste for an individual producer, particularly in the short-term. For example, in some cases, it may be more costly for a producer to invest in FW strategies to avoid food waste, than to simply not harvest, or dispose of, the FW. However, it is important for producers to consider the long-term costs and benefits of each approach. While avoiding FW may involve higher upfront costs, it can lead to significant cost savings (and other benefits such as improved reputation and customer loyalty) in the long term. Case studies from innovators that demonstrate the business case for reducing FW in a NZ context would be beneficial to help bring other producers along on this FW reduction challenge.

Farm-stage food waste reduction necessitates multiple initiatives rather than single solutions. The Ministry for Primary Industries is a key government player in production waste prevention. They already have work underway to reduce fisheries by-catch, for example. The government, alongside the industry, should also consider ways to expand quality specifications and continue to help develop a larger number of surplus product alternative markets. A review of contractual practices would be helpful to ensure risk sharing between parties, as would finding ways to promote widespread whole-crop harvesting.

3. Processing/manufacturing

Like production, we also have data gaps in NZ for this stage of the supply chain. Internationally, it is a significant contributor making up 16% of total food waste in Australia (FIAL, 2021). There are lots of actions that manufacturers can take to reduce waste. Manufacturers need to work with Government to ensure food waste does not occur further downstream at the consumer level because of inadequate date labelling and packaging practices. As well as static date labels, there are new smart packaging labelling technologies that help consumers and businesses determine the freshness of packaged foods and whether it is safe to eat. These technologies have the potential to significantly change the date labelling landscape and any thinking on date labelling in NZ must take into consideration these technologies and the impact these will have on consumer behaviour.

One food waste prevention action gaining momentum is upcycling food (for an overview of this sector in NZ, see Mirosa & Bremer, 2023). Upcycled foods are made from ingredients that would otherwise have ended up in a food waste destination. Upcycling these by-products, especially those waste streams that are unavoidable, provides an opportunity to unlock the financial value of food waste. While individual companies will be able to achieve reduction, there is enormous value in strengthening collaboration within this sector. There already exist several initiatives where collaboration has been key such as the Bioresource Processing Alliance, which takes primary sector biological by-products and turns them into valuable export products by co-funding and undertaking R&D alongside companies who want to develop these products.

A new initiative creating much excitement in NZ currently, which is all about collaboration, is the Kai Commitment. This is a voluntary agreement among leading food sector businesses designed to reduce food waste and related emissions across NZ's food supply chain. This is an initiative of the NZ FW Champions 12.3 Charitable Trust, and its role is to support businesses in implementing the internationally accepted best practice Target, Measure, Act process and foster industry collaboration on food waste reduction.

4. Distribution

Australia's data reports that 3% of total FW occurs at this stage (FIAL, 2021). The logistics and cost of transport for fresh produce is a cause of food waste, especially when moving between the country's North and South islands. It is often the case that it isn't cost-effective to deliver unmarketable fresh produce to food. Given this constraint, processing fresh produce as close to the source as possible will minimise the impact on transport on food waste production. The expansion of regional collaboration with supply chain players, as we have seen in Timaru and Hawkes Bay operating under the umbrella ‘Sustainable is Attainable’ – so that producers, food processors and manufacturers can establish regional resource hubs, will help to mitigate the impact of transport as a food waste driver.

Just as the cost and logistics of transporting food have limited processing options, in the past, they also have limited bulk food donations. The establishment of the NZ Food Network and its transport partnership with Turners and Growers has significantly helped reduce transport barriers to food donation, resulting in less food waste and more food in the communities that need it the most. This initiative supplements the activities of more than 30 other food rescue organisations, who collect, store and distribute thousands of tonnes of good, nutritious food each year to over 1000 recipient organisations across the country. The value created by these types of organisations has been demonstrated through a social return on investment which found that for every $1 invested in food rescue, $4.50 of value was generated (Clare et al., in press). Other economic analyses that demonstrate a return on investment in food waste solutions, or that show which potential solutions yield the highest overall economic impact are also encouraged.

5. Food service and retail

In terms of the retail sector, Australian estimates indicate that the wholesale/retail sector contributes about 7% of the country's total waste (FIAL, 2021). The publicly available NZ retail data (Goodman-Smith, Skeaff, & Mirosa, 2020) shows that supermarkets create 60,500 tonnes of unsold food annually. Of that, 38% is technically ‘wasted’, with 23% of that being sent to landfill. While the waste from retail stores is the most obvious source, it's also critical to consider the full extent of the waste that supermarkets and other large businesses can cause in food supply chains. Much of this waste isn't inevitable but occurs because of business decisions prioritising profit over waste reduction. The retail sector can act as a hub for the food system connecting and communicating between producers and consumers to indicate supply issues or changing demand for products with the aim of better-aligning supply and demand throughout the supply chain. Retailers could further relax standards on ‘wonky’ fruit and veg and expand their ‘odd-bunch-type’ ranges and increase the amount donated to food rescue.

6. Hospitality and food service

In Australia, 16% of total waste can be attributed to the hospitality sector and another 3% to food service institutions (FIAL, 2021). There are lots of positive actions already happening worth celebrating. An increasing number of restaurants are signing up for the ‘goodie box’ campaign promoted by chef Al Brown which provides diners with takeaway boxes for their leftovers. Not only is this helping to reduce restaurant plate waste, but the initiative is also raising funds for the social enterprise Everybody Eats which serves rescued food in a pay-as-you-feel dining setting. We are also seeing the rise of new avenues to repurpose unsold food from cafes and restaurants such as Foodprint and the Free Store in Wellington.

As NZ embarks on our national journey of running the Kai Commitment, our voluntary FW agreement for food businesses, it's interesting to note that after years of running something similar in the UK, the tide now seems to be turning towards an increased desire for regulation in this space. Tesco, for example, has called on the UK government to make it compulsory for businesses to publish their FW data, and a national consultation on this has just wrapped up. The UK government will also consult on legally binding FW targets. While our approach to date in engaging NZ businesses in the FW issue is mainly carrot (particularly through the voluntary Kai Commitment programme) there are also more ‘stick’-type approaches being considered. For example, we are awaiting the results of the Ministry for the Environment's recent consultation on mandating the separation of FW collections for businesses. If this is put in place, it will force businesses to separate waste, which means that, at the very least, they will become aware of how much they waste, which then makes acting to reduce this a logical next step. There also seems to be more of an increased appetite now than there was a few years ago for a conversation about banning food from landfill. Given that the country is at the early stages of our national FW reduction journey, it makes sense to start with a largely voluntary approach. However, it is worth keeping an eye on how regulatory measures on food waste measurement and reduction play out overseas, as these have the potential to bring real accountability to spur faster change in these sectors.

7. Household

Households have long been understood as where the most significant food waste occurs. This is particularly disturbing, given the greater the environmental impacts of this waste. In Australia, household waste comprises 32% of the nation's total waste stream (FIAL, 2021). Reportedly, the most wasted foods in NZ households are vegetables, bread, and fruit (Kantar, 2022). Wasting food is, for many, a habitual behaviour and thus hard to undo, particularly if the required changes clash with other priorities such as convenience or cost. Although currently, there is not much robust evidence of intervention-type effectiveness, particularly in the NZ context, this is set to change with a 2023 government investment of $8.3 million in organisations to develop and deliver large-scale, national-level behaviour-change programmes.

Also, on the household front, NZ is starting to see further rollouts of household food waste collections across the country. Diverting household food waste away from landfill is good waste management practice. Of course, this waste must go somewhere, and NZ's first large-scale food waste-to-bioenergy facility at Reporoa, in the central North Island, has just been constructed. At this, Ecogas will turn scraps into bio-fertilisers and biofuels used to feed crops, and our power homes and businesses. We need better waste management solutions, so the efforts of large players like this must be applauded. Likewise, more localised grassroots solutions, such as Compost Collective's community composting hubs that support urban composting, are also applauded. However, while food waste management systems and infrastructure are necessary, they are not food waste solutions in themselves and so must be balanced against the imperative to prioritise food waste prevention (UNEP, 2021). While current food waste volumes indicate a great need for food waste management systems and infrastructure, these volumes may not remain constant overtime and therefore shouldn't be taken to reflect an enduring need. If our country is successful in our preventive efforts – there will be much less waste to manage. We must mitigate any risk that waste management investments pose in that they end up incentivising the production of surplus food or food waste as feedstock (UNEP, 2021).

8. Conclusion

While NZ has arguably been much slower than many of our international counterparts in getting real traction on the food waste issue, the wheels are most definitely now moving with several key governmental and intergovernmental initiatives focussed on or closely related to food waste in NZ (for a summary see: Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor [OPMCSA], 2022). In 2023, the OPMCSA made food rescue and waste their major project for 2022/23. The team is publishing a series of reports that detail the size and extent of the problem and explore evidence-based solutions, making a series of recommendations for the country, for the next 12 months, by 2025, and by 2023 (OPMCSA, n.d.). As well as providing in-depth insights into specific areas of food waste, much of the value of this OPMCSA work is that it will create a holistic evidence base and interrelated series of recommendations for NZ moving forward. Food waste is, after all, a systems-wide issue that requires action from all stakeholders. As a leading food-producing nation that relies heavily on its clean green reputation to market its food abroad, NZ has the responsibility to act urgently to address this environmental, social, and economic issue.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the advocacy work of NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3 (https://www.nzchampions123.org/), from whom the title of this paper has been borrowed. Research colleagues at the Food Waste Innovation Research Theme (https://foodwaste-otago.org/) are also acknowledged for their scientific contributions to this important field.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).