National Food Waste Summit a Success

Theme Director Associate Professor Miranda Mirosa gave the opening summary for each section of the summit

Te Hui Taumata Moumou Kai o Aotearoa – New Zealand’s inaugural Food Waste Summit, was held at Villa Maria Winery in Auckland on Monday 22 March. The Summit was organised by WasteMINZ in collaboration with NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3. The Summit was deemed a huge success, bringing together food waste reduction experts including academics, researchers, food rescue organisations, food producer industry bodies, retailers, and hospitality experts.

Five University of Otago representatives were present at the Summit as well as theme Industry Representative Francesca Goodman-Smith. Theme Director Assoc. Prof. Miranda Mirosa gave the opening summary for each of the four sections of the Summit, which followed the food supply chain from farm to fork.

A highlight of the summit was the launch of a table of solutions developed by the NZ Food Waste Champions 12.3 in Collaboration with the Food Waste Innovation Research Theme, as part of a ‘Food Waste Reduction Map’. The summit attendees provided the final piece of input for the map through short workshop sessions. The full report will be released later this month.

An article by Farmers Weekly did a great job of reporting on some of the key action points for reducing food waste raised at the summit. Read the article.