National Food Waste Summit
On Thursday last week, on International Day of Awareness for Food Loss and Waste, Food Waste Innovation participated in the second annual National Food Waste Summit - Te Hui Taumata Moumou Kai o Aotearoa. The summit was put on by WasteMINZ, in collaboration with NZ Champions 12.3 in Pōneke/Wellington with speakers from across the sector and the motu. We had great representation from theme members at the summit, our steering committee members Phil Bremer, Sheila Skeaff, Miranda Mirosa and Trixie Croad were all in attendance, as well as PhD student Grace Clare. Our international representative Francesca Goodman smith was not able to be there in person, but gave a recorded presentation about the future of the upcycled food sector.
Food Waste Innovation hosted the ‘Student Showcase’ session, where 10 of our postgraduate students presented on their research projects. We had some great feedback on this, attendees were really interested to hear about the range of research happening within the theme, including research in the upcycled food space, on food waste in primary production, and on the social value of food rescue, among other topics.
Our Director, Associate Professor Miranda Mirosa once again played an integral part in the summit, outlining what we know about food waste at each stage of the supply chain.
overall we had a great day, it was awesome to see the growing enthusiasm and range of solutions in this space. Huge Mihi to Sarah Pritchett and the WasteMINZ team as well as Kaitlin Dawson from NZ Champions 12.3 who was the MC for the summit.
One News came along to capture some footage for a news story on food waste, which aired on their program on Friday night. See the clip here: