Blog 3 “Food Waste Wednesday”

Blog 3 from the Food Waste summit

Three very different organisations shared some of the things they are doing to reduce food waste at

the food waste summit put on by by WasteMinz and NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3 on October 23.

Foodstuffs South Island

First up was Kyrin Gourley from Foodstuffs South Island, sharing the 24 months process they have

gone through to reduce the amount of food going to landfill. And once again having good data has

enabled Foodstuffs to drive decisions.

Kryin started by giving some insight into the amount of food they move around the South Island.

They have 120 trucks, moving 1.2 million cartons of food to their network of over 200 stores, which

equals covering the circumference of the globe fives times every week. When you are working with

numbers like this, small changes can make a big difference.

Foodstuffs has four steps in their Food Waste Action Program.

1. Connecting Foodstuffs 1200 South Island staff to the realities of food waste.

2. Gamification of targets – making it fun for staff to make a difference

3. Developing systems to meet food waste reduction targets – this is where having good data

makes a really big difference.

4. Sharing the results with staff, with suppliers and other stakeholders.

Foodstuffs is seeing a difference in the amount of food going to landfill.

In the last year there has been a:

 40.4% increase in the tonnage of supply chain food donated to food rescue organisations.

That is, the food that cannot be sold, but is still good to eat.

 15.6% increase in the monetary value of supply chain donations.

 13.2% decrease in supply chain damages.

This all represents less food going to landfill.

Kyrin said best of all is the 1200 staff who feel more connected to the communities they serve

because they know the difference they are making by keeping food out of landfill and getting it to

people that need it.

South Kaipara Good Food

Gemma Donaldson from South Kaipara Good Food talked about how they are nourishing

communities and cultivating change in their community. Kaipara is an isolated rural community, not

that far from Auckland, that gets cut off from the outside world with most major weather events.

South Kaipara Good Food started out with just a Food Bank service then in 2020 they did some

research with the community and it became clear that the community wanted a kai economy, not

just a food bank. They support about 700 families a month with kai through their Kai nourish

programme which includes cooking meals for families as well as the food bank.

They also now have the Kai Grow programme. This revolves around a 700m 2 greenhouse, where they

grow seedlings for the community to put in their own gardens. They have a set up a compost hub by

the greenhouse so whanau can bring their food scraps, which get composted and then this is used in

the greenhouse and shared with the community.

About 50 volunteers are involved in both the kai nourish and kai grow programmes.

Gemma also talked about the need for good data because without good data they can’t advocate for

systems change through the whole food chain or tell their story.

Cherry Rescue Project by CherryCorp

Stephanie Cavell from CherryCorp heads up the Cherry Rescue Project, which started in 2019 from a

desire to do better and not have so many cherries go to landfill. CherryCorp was established about

40 years ago and they are the largest covered cherry grower in Cromwell.

They work on the basis that every cherry has a purpose and are aiming to be waste free by 2030.

Wine was the obvious place for them to start with the cherry rescue programme given they are in a

wine region. Stephanie said they then moved into producing cherry concentrate and cherry puree

which is used in drinks and other food products. They are currently working with over 70 new

product developments and do this by working in partnership and collaboration with other

organisations.

They are starting to look beyond cherries and working with growers of other summer fruit in the

area to see how fruit that doesn’t make the grade for sale can be used.

Remember “Consider what the food was meant to be, not the waste it became”.