​Waste not, want not

Auckland Council has launched its first-ever funding campaign to get communities involved with preventing food waste.

Organisers received 64 entries to the “Love Food Hate Waste” programme which offers $40,000 to successful applicants. The results are expected to be released by the end of the month.

Applications closed recently.

The campaign aims to educate Kiwi households on the importance of food waste prevention.

Sarah van Boheemen, spokeswoman for environmental organisation WasteMINZ, which works in partnership with the council, said the campaign was a way for Kiwi families to help lessen the damage food waste causes to the planet.

"Most people don't realise when they chuck away an apple or something like that, it actually goes on to have this environmental impact.

"Every time you throw away food, you're throwing away the money that you spent on it and all the time and resources that went into creating it. In New Zealand, the average family wastes about $563 worth of food every year, and that equates to about three full shopping trolleys of food," she said.

Danielle Kennedy, the community WasteWise team leader which educates schools for the council, hoped the campaign, which involves "good planning, good storage, [and] getting creative with leftovers", would help promote food waste prevention.

"Part of this is about raising people's awareness that food waste is a problem, so we want to do something about that,” she said.

Owen Young, a food science professor at AUT, thinks buying frozen food can sometimes contribute to the food waste mountain, because people misunderstand when and how it could be used.

However, he believed the way forward wasn’t easy.

"Nothing like a good recession or a famine to change behaviour," he joked.

In places such as Tauranga, where people pay to throw out rubbish by the bag, cost was a strong motivator, he said.

"There's a financial incentive. It's just the way forward."