Week 1

How much food do we waste? Is this an important issue? 
Study the image below to learn the answer.

After you have studied the information above, complete the activity that follows to match the statement with the data shown in the table below:

Our throw away culture is costly
Billions of kilograms of food are thrown away each year, worth billions of dollars and enough to feed millions of people. Wasted food is a very serious issue. Our throw away culture, costs us time, money and our environment.

 Contributing Factors

This video on food waste identifies some of the factors to why so much food is wasted. (The video ends at 9.07)

Watch

You will have noticed both “Best Before’ days and “Use-By” dates on products. Did you pick up what the difference is between these and how important they are?  

Self-Directed Learning

Create a simple Food Waste poster or infographic and display this on the class discussion board. Your visual should only include one message or fact.

If you need some inspiration you can find lots of examples on the internet - like this kit: Be a Food Waste Warrior.

Now you have seen some of the statistics relating to food waste we will look at their significance and why it is such a key issue. In Delivery 4 we looked at the food production journey – from growers to consumers. Food waste can (and does) occur at each step of the way. (Note: “food waste” applies to food commodities at the retail or consumption stage - shops, hospitality businesses, households; “food loss” is used for food commodities discarded before the retail/consumption stage – you may see both terms used, but we will use “food waste” to simplify things.)

Growers
Food loss can occur during the growing phase for crops, the raising of livestock or in catching of wild produce (e.g. fishing). Food loss can be through:

• Weather damage (e.g. an estimated 30% of French wine will be lost in 2021 due to a late cold snap and frosts in April.) (The Guardian, 2021)
• Damage caused during the harvesting of crops through faulty machinery or spillage. 
• Consumer preferences - some crops are left to rot and not picked because they are seen as “imperfect” and likely to be rejected by supermarkets. Other crops remain unpicked for economic reasons – the cost of picking and packing is more than the return for selling the produce.
• For livestock - disease or animal death causes losses. (e.g. Foot and Mouth disease outbreaks are devastating for cattle farmers.)
• The fishing industry is a major offender when it comes to food loss. Discarding bycatch is the damaging practice of catching non-target species, then throwing them back, usually dead, into the sea.

Processors

• By-products of food processing are a cause of food loss (e.g. sugar cane pulp).
• Spoilage during processing through operational errors or mechanical outages (equipment malfunction, power outages etc.).
• Food rejected by quality control or by the customer.

Distribution

• Spoilage due to poor handling, storage or delays in transportation.
• Spillages. 
• Container or packaging damage through mishandling.

Retail/Wholesale

• Overstocking of perishable products which cannot be sold quickly enough.
• Poor handling and storage.
• Unpredictable customer demand.

Households

• Over-purchasing and poor meal planning.
• Over-reliance on best-by dates.
• Non-optimal storage conditions (uncovered food, over-crowded fridges etc.)
• Lack of knowledge on how to prepare fresh food, how to save and reuse left overs and how to preserve/freeze food to minimise waste.
• Supermarkets promoting “specials”, such as BOGOF (Buy One, Get One Free) which encourage customers to buy more than they can use.
• Product packaging sizes too big for all of the product to be used before it expires.

Exercise 3

Watch the video Life of A Strawberry, which follows the strawberry from ‘field to fork’, then copy and complete the value chain in your journal. (List possible food loss/waste at each step.)

Food loss and waste along the value chain

Production	Handling & Storage	Processing & Packaging	Distribution & Market	Consumption
During or immediately after harvesting on the farm	After produce leaves the farm for handling, storage, and transport.	During industrial or domestic processing and/or packaging.	During distribution to markets, including losses at wholesale and retail markets.	Losses in the home or business of the consumer, including restaurants/caterers.
enter here: (loss/waste)	enter here: (loss/waste)	enter here: (loss/waste)	enter here: (loss/waste)	enter here: (loss/waste)

Download the table and complete the bottom row.

As you may recall from the beginning of this module, food waste is impacting in ways you may not have realised. We'll break that down a bit further now and look at the:

1. environmental impacts
2. economic impacts

1. Environmental Impact

All food that is produced consumes resources to grow, harvest, transport, store, and cook. Food waste is estimated to be up to 35% of food produced in some countries — clearly an enormous waste of the fuel, energy, and other inputs needed to produce it. It is estimated that all the food waste produced in the USA would take a farm nearly the size of California to grow.  (environmentalleader.com, n.d.), (ReFED, n.d.) Not only does this food get produced, transported, stored, maybe cooked and then discarded uneaten but worse still much is disposed of in landfills.

2. Economic impact

The yearly cost of food waste in the USA is estimated to be around NZ$400 billion (approx. $1200 per person) (ReFED, n.d.) In New Zealand, the estimate is that we waste around NZ$1.8 billion of food each year (approx. $360 per person). (Stuff.co.nz, 2017)

Take some time to research the following points to help understand and compare food waste differences between countries.

• What are the statistics for other countries? 
• Are developing countries wasting as much food as developed countries?
• What could this money have been better used for?

Self-Directed Learning

The graph below shows most food losses occur early in the food supply chain for low-income countries but late in the chain for high-income countries. Think about some of the reasons for this trend then copy and complete the summary table in your journal. Discuss with your class.

Low-income countries	High-income countries
CAUSES OF HIGH FOOD LOSSES
•	•
•	•
WAYS TO PREVENT FOOD LOSSES
•	•
•	•

Download the table to complete the Self-Directed Learning.

Food insecurity

Food security is a term that applies to measuring how well people are able to access safe, sufficient, and nutritious food. If we are “food secure” it means that we can get enough good quality food to meet our nutritional requirements at all times.  For some people in our society and many others around the world, this is not always the case and food insecurity is a big problem. 

Research the statistics for food insecurity in New Zealand and elsewhere and note them in your journal.

Here are a few sites to get you started:

• New Zealand creates tonnes of food waste. Supermarkets are trying to close the loop
• Kiwi Harvest: About Us - What we do
• Everybody Eats
   

1. What are your thoughts about the number of people who are “food insecure” and the amount of food wasted each year?
2. How has the COVID pandemic affected food security?

What kinds of foods are wasted?;

A breakdown of food waste in the USA shows:

• 34% of food waste is from produce (fruit and vegetables).
• 20% is prepared food.
• 16% is dairy and eggs.
• Other food categories account for much less food waste.

(ReFED - Food Waste Monitor, n.d.)

A “bin audit” of New Zealand household rubbish bins showed:

• 26% of food waste from fresh fruit.
• 25% was vegetables.
• 13% meat and fish.

(WasteMINZ & Sunshine Yates Consulting, 2018)

To get started on this topic, please watch the video as we start to consider the role hospitality plays in food waste statistics.

Watch

• In the US, 14% of all food waste generated is from food service. (ReFED - Food Waste Monitor, n.d.)
• In New Zealand foodservice is responsible for over 24,000 tonnes of food waste per year – 61% of which is avoidable. (WasteMINZ, 2018)

Food waste is a significant problem for the hospitality industry but well-managed it can actually result in increased profitability. In task 2 we will look at ways in which our restaurants and other food businesses can avoid or reduce food waste and how they can contribute to a more sustainable way of dealing with non-avoidable food waste.

Given the high cost of fresh food, plus the environmental impact of producing all of the food that is wasted, getting a grip on the food waste problem is something every food business should be considering.

How food is wasted in hospitality

While food waste is inevitable in an industry that must anticipate food needs, there are things that can be done to drastically reduce the impact of the problem. 

Read the statistics on Food waste and then do the exercise.

Where Food Waste Happens

Exercise 6

Study the infographic and then complete the task below.

Use the forum to what those numbers mean for a food business.

• Think of examples in kitchens you have worked in (or in campus kitchens) of when these different kinds of food waste occurred.
• Copy and complete the table in your journal. Under each of the three headings list as many examples as you can think of. 

FOOD PREPARATION	PLATE WASTE	FOOD SPOILAGE
•	•	•
•	•	•
•	•	•

Download the table to complete the exercise.

The following articles about food waste are useful background reading to help with this exercise and also with your assessment.

• Mitigation of Food Wastage - societal costs and benefits
• Champions 12.3 - SDG Target 12.3 on food loss and waste: 2021 Progress Report