The second New Zealand Food Waste Summit is set to take place in Wellington on September 29.
29th September is International Food Waste and Loss Awareness Day. With an estimated 1/3 of food not making it from the paddock and packhouse to the plate, and food waste is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, we need to accelerate the work to reduce food waste. At the same time, it is estimated that the number of New Zealanders experiencing food insecurity is around one million.
The Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, Dame Juliet Gerrard, opened the summit and explained the Food Waste and Rescue project her team is working on. Speakers will then traverse the role of mātauranga Māori in reducing food waste, food upcycling, innovations in food rescue and consumer empowerment, interventions to reduce household food waste and closing the loop to ensure residual food waste nourishes the soil it came from.
Michal Garvey from FoodPrint, Diane Stanbra from Rescued Kitchen and our funder Wendy Zhou, are the panellists on 'Consumers Empowerment'
"45 percent of fresh produce never leaves the farm and goes straight to compost or landfills because they don't look perfect. Consumers have a lot of power by choosing to support organisations that are tackling food waste head-on. This consumer action can change how we think of food waste and address food insecurity," said Zhou.
What can consumers do to help reduce food waste?Eating Mindfully
Treating food as food and understanding the value of it is good to eat, not only good to buy.
Looking Beyond Perfect
Change our perception when we go shopping in a supermarket, pick up tomatoes from a shelf, with a vision of this fruit has been growing in the greenhouse for the last 70 days, delicately taken care of by local growers in Pukekohe ( almost 50% of tomatoes grows here), 214 litres of water required to grow 1kg tomatoes, and many other people's hard works to sort, pack, transport and arrange for us to purchase.
Now it seems all makes sense to have some fun and craziness-looking ones.
Being Perfectly Imperfect
Let's all be perfectly imperfect little by little each day. Pick up our special gleaning mystery box today, and for every 10 mystery boxes paid forward, sponsor another 4 families in the community who needs help with good food.