Food waste campaign to break the mould

Thousands of tonnes of food which is wasted every year could be greatly reduced under a national education campaign with the help of $460,000 of Government funding, Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith announced today.

“The Love Food Hate Waste initiative tackles the problem of households throwing away more than 100,000 tonnes of food each year, costing hundreds of millions of needlessly wasted dollars. Love Food Hate Waste has the potential to not only reduce household costs but to also reduce our annual landfill and its harmful environmental impacts,” Dr Smith says.

Waste industry body WasteMINZ will partner with 59 councils in the $1 million project to educate New Zealanders on ways to reduce the amount of food households send to landfill each year. 

The campaign, modelled on one established in the United Kingdom in 2007, will run in New Zealand over three years and participating councils will run local events to inform and educate communities about food waste. The Love Food Hate Waste website - www.lovefoodhatewaste.co.nz - will launch on Wednesday as an information and communication hub for the campaign.

“The environmental benefits of reducing food waste include lower greenhouse gas emissions from food decomposing into methane and less transport emissions, as well as benefits to water quality and biodiversity from fewer demands on our farming systems,” Dr Smith says.

“It is not practical to regulate to reduce food waste because there are times when food should be discarded. This campaign is about changing attitudes and getting people to think about reducing food waste in the same way household recycling has become the norm over the past generation.”