A national campaign has been launched to reduce the amount of household food waste New Zealanders discard each year. The “Love Food, Hate Waste” campaign is being run by councils nationwide and aims to significantly reduce the estimated $872 million in food that Kiwi households waste annually.

Research based on a survey of 1,365 New Zealanders and an examination of the contents of 1,402 household rubbish bins, plus data from 100 families recording food disposal for a week, showed that Kiwis throw away over 122,547 tonnes of edible food a year – enough to feed the entire population of the Bay of Plenty for 12 months. Bread, fruit, veggies and meal leftovers are the most commonly discarded foods, with nearly 80 kg of edible food being wasted in each household each year.

Whakatāne District Council Solid Waste Manager Nigel Clarke says that not only is this waste a drain on family budgets, it is also an unnecessary burden on our environment. “Based on the number of households in the Whakatāne District, we are likely to be throwing away more than 900 tonnes of food, with a value of at least $6.7 million every year,” he says. “All of that has to be processed and disposed of, so there’s also the flow-on cost of dealing with that waste to be considered. Nationally, if we eliminated the amount of gasses our food waste produces in landfills, it would be equivalent to taking 118,000 cars off the road.”

Mr Clarke says the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign aims to make New Zealanders think about their waste and find ways to make use of food leftovers, for the benefit of their own pockets and the environment.

For more information on how to reduce your food waste, go to Love Food, Hate Waste on Facebook.