Dame Juliet Gerrard comes to visit
In July, Food Waste Innovation were honoured to host the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Dame Professor Juliet Gerrard, and Emily McCarthy for a two day visit to Ōteopti. This visit was in light of the OPMCSA major project for 2022/2023 focused on food rescue, food loss, and food waste. Throughout the two days, we put together a program of events and activities engaging with everyone from the general public, our own researchers and students, other stakeholders at the University, to other local stakeholders such as Dunedin City Council, Pōpopo composting facility, and Emerson's Brewery. The visit also coincided with the New Zealand Food Waste Champions of 12.3 round table hosted by the University of Otago. Some of the highlights from the two day program included:
A welcome morning tea in the clock tower: The first item on the agenda was to welcome Juliet and Emily to town. We kicked off with morning tea in the beautiful Vice Chancellor’s Council Chambers in the Clock Tower building. Vice Chancellor David Murdoch and Pro-Vice Chancellor Richard Barker, along with our Food Waste Innovation researchers and allies across campus joined us to celebrate the start of the two days of activities.
‘Envisaging an Aotearoa without Food Waste’ panel discussion event: We wanted to take full advantage of having so much expertise and influence in the food waste space concentrated one place and share it with the Dunedin public. In collaboration with NZ Food Waste Champions of 12.3, we held a panel discussion event where the panelists, who included NZ Champions as well as Food Waste Innovation Researchers, were asked to give their take on an “Aotearoa without food waste”. The public were invited to ask their burning food waste questions and were treated to a range of upcycled food tasters developed by our Upcycled Food Lab, or donated by our friends at the Upcycled Grain Project and Rescued Kitchen. Over all a successful evening and insightful for all involved.
Theme-based Workshops: We held a series of three intimate workshops where researchers and students presented and discussed issues relating to the three workstreams set out by the OPMCSA project. Namely, prevention during production, processing, manufacturing, and distribution; prevention through consumer empowerment and retail and food service practice; and capturing value through food rescue, upcycling and recycling. Through these sessions, our researchers were able to relay their expertise on the opportunities and challenges, as well as give their recommendations for government in these areas. These workshops were incredibly valuable, both for our researchers to be able to have such a direct line of science communication to the Prime Minister and the government in general, as well as for Juliet and Emily to ask targeted questions and be introduced to the array of researchers and research projects taking place in this space within Food Waste Innovation.
Demonstrations of student projects: we took Juliet and Emily through the Food Science Lab and gave them a taste of some of the student projects happening in the upcycled food space as well as innovative biometrics technologies being used to better understand consumer behaviour. This activity was a hit with the media as well, both the Otago Daily Times, and Newshub reported on our student’s work.
Visits to UniCol, Pōpopo, and Emerson’s Brewery: As well as our own research, we wanted to give Juliet and Emily a taste of the different mahi happening around campus and North Dunedin. We started with lunch at UniCol followed by a visit to their newly installed anaerobic digester to process their plate and kitchen waste. Next we headed down to the Otago Polytechnic where we were shown around the Pōpopo composting facility which processes food waste from across the polytech. Finally, we finished off with a visit to Emerson’s Brewery, to showcase some of the work our researchers are doing with their team to reduce and repurpose their brewing waste.
We are grateful to have contributed our expertise to this mahi and eagerly await the OPMCSA reports to come. Thanks to all those who were part of this successful two day program, and thanks to Juliet and Emily for taking the time to come down and hear from our team of experts.
Check out the Otago Bulletin piece HERE and see photos of the two day visit below.
