Has 3 years of campaigning against food waste had an impact?

For the past 3 years Love Food Hate Waste New Zealand has been campaigning to reduce household food waste in New Zealand. Despite 122,000 tonnes of edible food being wasted by Kiwi households annually at a cost of $872 million, it was an issue that had gone under the radar.

Together with Sarah Van Boheemen, members of WasteMINZ’s Behaviour Change Sector Group and councils around the country we set out to raise awareness of the issue of food waste and give people the skills and knowledge to change their behaviour.

So after 3 years of campaigning: 679 events around the country; 40,000 plus followers on Facebook; building pyramids out of bread on live TV; setting up a community fridge, did we have an impact?

Well the good news is that 88% of New Zealanders value the food they buy and don’t want to waste it and 66% have taken actions to reduce their food waste over the past two years. Most people think they have made on average six different changes to reduce food waste, from eating leftovers to meal planning to eating their broccoli stalks after our successful “Be a stalker” campaign.

The bad news is that when we went and investigated household rubbish bins last year there was little evidence for the average household that these actions had made a dent in their food waste. Food waste on average has only decreased from 3.17 kg per household per week to 3.15 kg.

For households who had heard and engaged with the Love Food Hate Waste campaign it was a different story. On average they had reduced their food waste by 27%, a reduction of 48 kilos per household per annum. In total 14,000 tonnes of food waste have been diverted from landfill by those who engaged with the campaign.

The challenge of changing food waste behaviour is the same worldwide. Unlike buying an electric car, where a one-off decision leads to an improved environmental outcome, tackling food waste has more in common with issues such as obesity and fitness where you must continually make the choice over and over again to do the right thing. Everyday we decide how much food to buy, how much food to cook, whether to eat our leftovers or throw them away. Being good just once a year isn’t enough.

We have made a good start in New Zealand, but there is still much work to be done.  

View the summary of the campaign evaluation here