Reducing food waste
Globally an estimated one third of all the food we produce is lost or wasted between farm and fork each year. That’s 1.3 billion tonnes of food that is never eaten.
Impact on our greenhouse gas emissions
- 9% of New Zealand's biogenic methane emissions and 4% of our total greenhouse gas emissions are from food and organic waste.
- Reducing food waste helps lower our greenhouse gas emissions, including emissions in the food production process, as well as emissions from the decomposition of food waste in landfill.
Social and economic benefits
- One in five children in New Zealand live in households experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity.
- Redistributing good quality, surplus food to those who need it can have a positive impact on food security and community resilience.
- Business and households can save money, through better resource efficiency and planning.
- Food waste that does occur can be recovered and made into new things. For example Citizen Collective takes surplus bread and spent grains from brewing, turning the bread into beer and the spent grains back into bread.
Ministry for Social Development
The Ministry for Social Development provides support for the food rescue sector through its Food Secure Communities programme.
In addition to funding local community food providers, the programme also helped to establish three national partner organisations:
- New Zealand Food Network - distributes bulk surplus and donated food from food producers, growers, and wholesalers to food hubs around New Zealand on an ‘as required’ basis. These food hubs then distribute the food onto foodbanks and other community food services.
- Aotearoa Food Rescue Alliance - provides national support for local food rescue organisations to reduce food waste and increase food security through capacity building, promoting good practice, enhancing collaboration, and advocacy.
- Kore Hiakai Zero Hunger Collective – supports frontline community food organisations to distribute food in mana enhancing ways, while also undertaking work to address the root causes of food insecurity.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)
The Ministry for Primary Industries administers the Food Act 2014. MPI has developed advice on:
These pages provide useful information on:
- Requirements under the Food Act 2014 for donating food
- Information on ‘use by’ and ‘best before’ dates
- Requirements for using food waste as animal feed
- Legality and safety of ‘doggy bags’.
Food loss and waste definition for Aotearoa New Zealand
The Ministry has developed a definition for food loss and waste in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The definition supports government initiatives including:
- measuring food loss and waste
- improving household kerbside recycling collections
- the emissions reduction plan.
Food loss and waste definition
Imported or domestically produced food and drink, including inedible parts, which leave the food supply chain from the point that crops and livestock are ready for harvest or slaughter onwards to the point of consumption, to be recycled, recovered or disposed of in Aotearoa New Zealand.
The Government encourages anyone planning to measure food loss and waste to consider using this definition. This is so that measurements are conducted consistently across Aotearoa.
Find further information in Food loss and waste definition for Aotearoa New Zealand.
Establishing a baseline measure of food loss and waste in Aotearoa
We commissioned the University of Otago to come up with a baseline measure of food loss and waste.
The initiative is in response to a recommendation by the Environment Committee in its March 2020 report.
The research identified:
- the amount of food loss and waste in Aotearoa
- the amount that occurs in each sector of the food supply chain
- waste destinations that food loss and waste ends up in
- where the data gaps are
Read the full report – Baseline measurement of food loss and waste in Aotearoa.
Funding food waste initiatives
Our Ministry has supported a number of initiatives to reduce food waste through the Waste Minimisation Fund (WMF). Some projects and organisations we have supported include:
- Love Food Hate Waste – an ongoing national education campaign which provides resources, recipes, and tips to help households reduce their food waste.
- Kai Ika - A collaborative project which collects fish heads, frames and other previously discarded fish parts, and redistributes these to families and community groups in Auckland who value these fish parts. Today, the Kai Ika project distributes more than two tonnes of fish off-cuts a week.
- KiwiHarvest - a food rescue organisation that works with food businesses across Aotearoa to redistribute quality food that is unable to be sold for a variety reasons, such as oversupply or simply nearing its best-before or use-by date.
Waste Minimisation Fund (WMF)
2025
As of 1 July 2025 the WMF is focused on infrastructure projects that help divert organic waste from landfill. This focus supports the WMF's contribution to New Zealand's Emissions Reduction Plan.
2021
The 2021 round for the WMF included investment signals for improved tools to avoid food waste and increased domestic capacity of existing food rescue organisations.
Funding for national food waste reduction programmes
We sought expressions of interest from organisations interested in developing and delivering national programmes to reduce food waste.
The call for expressions of interest closed on 4 December 2022.
The work involves designing, developing and delivering programmes that reduce food waste over a three-year period.
The programmes will aim to reduce food waste in three settings: households, Māori-led settings (such as marae, kōhango reo, kura kaupapa, papakāinga), and businesses.