The big picture on food waste - Kaitlin Dawson and Iain Lees-Galloway

Hello and welcome to this climate business, the podcast about turning the climate crisis into opportunity. Please follow us on social media and rate the podcast as it helps others to find us. I hope you enjoy the show. Well, Caitlin Ian, thank you so much for joining me on the show. It's a pleasure to be here. Sure, thank you. We only just made it. I were very patient, waiting for me in the studio while I scrambled on my bike to get here, but I'm pleased to have made it. So we're talking about food waste. And I guess we know, in principle, about food waste and that it is an ongoing problem. But Caitlin, could you just give us a sense of how big a problem? What are we looking at here, both in New Zealand and perhaps even globally? Absolutely. I think you've touched on that. We know it's a problem, but I think we've only known it's a problem. Most of us for the last couple of years, our understanding has increased and so globally, we know that one third of everything that we grow doesn't make it to the plate. And that equates to about 30% of agricultural land. So if we think of all of the resources that we invest in growing nutritious kai, such as water, energy, all the emissions that go into food, that's about 30% of land that's wasted. Here in Alteroah, we don't yet have those stats. So we can't talk to how much we waste across the whole system. We do have some statistics that about how much we throw away at home. So we know about 130,000 tons of food is thrown away at the household level. And that equates to $1500 a year. So at the household, you know, you're throwing that much in the bin. But what we do know is that the emissions that come from food waste and we're here to talk about the climate contribute dramatically to climate change. So when food ends in landfill, it converts to toxic greenhouse gases called methane, which we don't know much about. And that is a big contributor to climate change. So here in New Zealand, about 4% of our emissions come from landfilled food waste. Globally, it's about 10%. But part of my role with looking at the whole system is to try and open people's eyes to the embodied emissions. So this is everything that's invested upstream. And if we take something like a loaf of bread, about 6% of the emissions from a loaf of bread are when it's landfilled or when it ends in a bin. And the rest of the emissions are before that. So if we aren't looking at food waste like a key solution to our climate issues, then we're looking at it wrong. And the whole thing seems so mental when you break it down like that. How have we got to this position? You're looking at it, I guess, in a systemic kind of way, right? I guess we could drill down to the individual behaviors and mistakes that might happen in production. But you're both here because you want to look at at a systems level, right? Not just an individual level. So maybe just tell us about the two organisations and how they work. We've had deeper meaning on the show before talking about Kiwi Harvest and the incredible work that's done there. But what you two represent is sort of the coming together of a lot of individual effort, right? So maybe start with the end. What do you do? And how do you fit in with what Kaitlyn's just described? Yeah, so I'm with the alter to our food rescue alliance. And you mentioned Kiwi Harvest, who are one of our members. We have 36 members across the whole country. So they are food rescue organisations that are closely connected to their local communities. And their primary role is to collect surplus food that is still good to eat, but is at risk of going to waste and distributing that food to people in need. And our primary source of food is the supermarkets. But actually from what we know with the international data, and hopefully we'll know soon with New Zealand data as well, is that the supermarkets are probably only contributing around about 7% of the total food waste is coming from supermarkets. But for our members, that's the easy place to get it from. There's a lot more happening further upstream, whether it's at the production level or even in the manufacturing. Right. So 7% just to clarify, 7% food waste is at supermarket level. So that leaves 93% where else? So coming from about 28% coming from the farm or the orchard, about 17% I think coming from manufacturing. So that's at the front here is all the silver farm farms or that sort of level. But Caitlin talked about household waste early on. 51% coming from household waste. So obviously a lot of effort needs to go into behaviour change and support to encourage people not to be wasting food at the household level. We tend to work further upstream. And so our members, as I say, they're collecting from supermarkets. We're working more to step into collecting from, particularly from growers. We talk about gleaning, which is going in after the main harvest and picking up the fruit or the vegetables that haven't been harvested for commercial reasons. And then taking those back to the food rescue and distributing them into the community. So we have a very specific role. And that is to deal with the surplus that exists. Caitlin, I'm sure we'll talk about the work that's going on to try and reduce the creation of surplus in the first place. Our role is to say there is some surplus in the system. Let's take it and let's get it to people, which is the intended purpose of growing food in the first place. So that it doesn't end up going into landfill or wherever. And then of course you've got people at other parts of the system, like the composters, who are saying, "Okay, once food becomes waste, what's the best use of it, the best use is to make it into compost and get it recycled into the system, rather than it going into the landfill and coming methane." We'll come back to both those points because there's a whole question around commerciality as well. Presumably, you would like supermarkets to remain in business. So, diverting food to non-paying customers will have its challenges. We'll come back to that. Caitlin, what is your organisation do and how does that fit in what Eens just described? Sure. So I lead New Zealand Food Waste Champions 12.3, where a charitable trust that takes the whole of system lens on food waste reduction. And so we are here to connect and collaborate across the system to advocate for best policy, best case policy, and to galvanise industry action. So they're kind of the main focuses we have and we step back and take the lens a few things Eens mentioned of how much has wasted at each stage, but recently we mapped the ecosystem of the food waste sector. That would be right. For example, it was, originally I did it, I'm originally from Australia, guilty as charged, and I originally mapped it because I just needed to understand who was doing what. And as I mapped it, I realised quite quickly that not many people understood who was doing what, even those that are so active in the space that are making incredible impact. I found a lot of duplication, some efficiencies that we can increase, but also so many learnings that could be shared or potential learnings and opportunities for collaboration. So what we're seeing internationally, where food waste is actually being reduced, the most impactful projects are those that are collaborative and many stakeholders working together. So the mission of our organisation is to look at all of those areas and sectors which Eens mentioned and to make sure that we have the right people at the table to have those conversations because we know that food waste is generally not created through decisions of your own making. So a business can reduce their own food waste and there are definitely decisions that generate food waste within their control, but a lot of their decisions generate food waste either up or downstream. So when we are talking about growers and surf plus and Eens mentioned gleaning the surplus produce, a lot of the reason there is surplus are not through decisions that those growers have made. And so they may not be able to influence whether they have surplus or not and they want to grow that food to make sure they can sell it, but then if they can't sell it, what do they do with it? And so our focus is ensuring that firstly we avoid food waste ever being created and that's that top of the hierarchy and that is where we really get into the economic benefits of reducing food waste and that's important for our economy, that's important for the government, that's important for business, but that's also important for the cost of living that we all face. I've just met me think of free markets are supposed to be efficient. Right, in a perfect world we've got pure information and we should have by now organised an end to end supply chain that ends with and is driven by efficiency. When you mapped it out, I didn't, but bursting to start because I know he's going to have a point of view, but when you did that mapping, what was it that stopped that supply chain being efficient? Like a good free marketer would think? Well, it depends who's perspective you take. I would say many would say that our supply chain or our food system is efficient, is sufficient, but the amount of people that are experiencing food insecurity would probably not say that and us looking at food surplus and food waste would not say that. So we didn't unfortunately map the material flows of food waste, which is more where you're asking we didn't have the resources to do that, but we actually just don't know because a lot of that are standing there. I agree. - I just have a clue. - I mean, I have some clues. But a lot of that understanding is within businesses. So we lead a program called Chi Commitment, which our organization started, which currently has eight of the largest businesses signed up to the agreement to commit to food waste reduction and collaboration across the supply chain. So they are working to reduce food waste within their business and working with others. But they haven't mapped the hotspots outside of their business. And we are working to get them to collaborate on that. - Yes. - I'm getting the information out so we can understand those material flows and those breakdowns and work on those interception points. - Right. - Silo's creating this breakdown at the same time. - That's the state of play now. And that's driven by us being an export nation and the businesses not speaking to each other in a pre-competitive way. So we're trying to create a pre-competitive space because we can't get these businesses together to talk about too much without getting into that competitive space. - Sure. - Yeah, super interesting question. And why do you think we don't have an efficient productive and supply chain, as opposed to that? - To echo, slightly what Caitlin said, it's very efficient at doing what it's meant to do, which is to produce food that we can sell overseas for profit and to put food on the shelves in the supermarket and to feed people who can afford to buy that food. That's what our food system is designed to do and it does it really well. What it doesn't do very well is keep waste to a minimum because we have infected in that externality. It's like anything with carbon emissions until we start putting a price on those things or creating regulations in the system. I think it was even Adam Smith said, free markets need to be well regulated. And in this instance, what we're talking about with good regulation is factoring in the externality of waste and carbon emissions. But also we need to take into account the fact that we have a lot of hungry people in a country of 5 million people that can feed 40 million people, 20% of our children regularly go hungry. And our system hasn't been designed to deal with that. So we need to change the system. And it might be that we can build a better free market system or it might be that we need to intervene in the market a bit more than we're doing at the moment. But up until now our market has not been designed to deal with waste or food insecurity. It's been about making as much money from food as possible. If you look at each individual silo, let's start with production. Let's start with a farm. There wouldn't be a single farmer that would wake up in the morning and say, I want a third of my produce to go to waste, right? So it's not like the incentive is there to waste or perhaps the incentive is, but the desire or the motivation is to be productive and to see that meat, that those crops be consumed. I'm assuming that's how farmers would operate. So what happens after food leaves the farm gate that would stop it from being fully processed? Well, even before food leaves the farm gate, it might not leave the farm gate. So you're absolutely right. No one makes up wanting to waste. No one at every stage manufacturing, processing, picking, packing, transport, retail, no one chooses to waste their food. However, the system is built around food loss and waste at the same time. So often it is cheaper to waste food than to get it to someone who might buy it or someone who will eat it. And so often it costs more to harvest food if the price on that day is not what it, you know, wouldn't cover the cost of harvest, for example. So there's a lot of food that's ready to harvest, that doesn't get harvested. And then once it gets harvested, it still has to meet specs and the price of the day and the demand and the market readiness. And there's lots of factors, whether events and all those sorts of things that come in, that mean even once it's harvested, it might not then get transported. So then we're really interested in secondary markets, which New Zealand doesn't have a lot of and doesn't have a great infrastructure for. And we're starting to see more of overseas. But this is how can we get perfectly edible produce that has been harvested, that has been grown, that has had a lot of emissions, energy, invested land and water into it? How can we get that to people at a reduced cost so they can purchase it? And what can that look like and what infrastructure do we need? And there are businesses starting to pop up, like Wunky Box, who are purchasing and remunerating growers to sell that produce to people. And then there's options like gleaming, which Ian mentioned. But then there's also things that I find quite interesting, which is turning into a longer shelf life product, which is, in my opinion, an Ian, you probably have, you know, better knowledge on this, but for food security, providing access to powders and that kind of thing from perfectly edible produce would be a really great way to give the community the nutrition they need. But we don't yet have anything kind of set up for that, any infrastructure here in New Zealand. And again, that's a systemic thing because we need the right stakeholders at the table to make that all happen because a grower has to focus on the growing. So they're not gonna go out and seek secondary markets for all of their digital produce. We need everyone to collaborate and work together and see, oh, I've got these kiwi fruits and I've got these apples and I've got these carrots and I've got these potatoes and how can we kind of get them together and someone else maybe take them and turn it into something and then get them to people at a cheaper price and we all get remunerated and it keeps the market. - And because to Ian's point, we haven't been calculating the cost of that waste and then allocating responsibility for that waste. It has been more efficient if you kind of look at it in that way for a farmer, for a producer, too, as much as it might break their heart, too waste because they haven't been either kind of punished for it. I don't mean that in the word, and it sounds worse than I mean, but they're not accountable for it, but they're also not rewarded for resolving it. What happens at a supermarket level? Because again, a supermarket is not gonna put stuff on the shelf thinking, well, I can't wait for this to go to in the bin. Again, the motivation is not to waste, but where's the systemic failure or the market failure that allows that waste to happen? - I think one of the biggest drivers is our expectation is consumers that we can wander into the supermarket at any time of day and find the shelves full. So the supermarkets really feel, yeah, they feel, the pressure probably isn't the right word, but they want to present an aesthetically pleasing experience to their customers and they want their customers to walk in and be able to get exactly what they want whenever they come in, and that means keeping the shelves stocked all of the time. And that can often be a driver of our food rescue organizations receive quantities of bread that would just blow people's minds. And it's the bread that's left over at the end of the day because the supermarket has kept the bread shelf stocked all day. So that's one of the drivers, but then it does come down to, yeah, they work really hard to try and predict what demand is going to be, but we're all human beings. Make mistakes. Have a really good story yesterday, but one of our members been called into a four square because there'd been a power cut. And so they went and grabbed all the frozen food and distributed it. That was an emergency situation, but they do happen, right? So some of it is systemic and it's around expectations and we might be able to do some things around behavior change, but some of it just comes down to the logistics of being at the front end of the food supply chain, trying to meet customer demand. And it doesn't always work perfectly. The market as a whole might work well, might be efficient, but at particular points and nodes in that system, there are going to be moments where things are just not quite calculated the right way and that generates surplus. At that quantity though, I can't remember exactly the numbers that you see, but it's substantial enough that one off events like a power cut wouldn't explain it. You know, it actually means you're absolutely right. A more fundamental behavior explanation. Yeah, and that's that kind of life. That's like a big driver is keeping the shelves stocked. Absolutely. Day labels also come. Day labels is another great one. Oh, yes, I knew you were right. You were expiring dates. So tell me about expiring dates. Always major source of discussion in our household. Is it, do you know what's what? Well, I just, I usually lose the argument to say, you know, this feels, this reads like it's a year out of date and my wife is a big fan of just cooking things really well. Good on her. Yeah, good on her. So public service announcements. Yeah. There is a difference between the best before date and the use by date. So best before means what it says. It's best before then, but you could use it afterwards. It tends to be more of a quality thing, right? So the product is going to be at its best before that date, but still usable after that date. Use by is a safety question. So you shouldn't really be eating food that's past its use by date. But unfortunately, we confuse the two. So we see a best before date. We pass that date and we come and they, oh, that's got to go in the bin. Actually quite often, that doesn't. And one that, you know, one that people possibly don't expect because we're all told, you know, that milk is something you've got to be careful of. Milk only has a best before date on it. Best thing to do with the milk when you take it out of the fridge. You have a sniff. If it smells good, still what's used. - Job sniffing milk. (laughs) - Awesome. - Yes, the be scones when it's slightly woofing. - There you go. - But I will also add, because we're on the topic of kind of systemic change, that something like date labeling requires, again, many stakeholders at the table, if we're going to make a shift on date labels. So there's one thing about educating us as eaters and consumers and households, your conversation. But another is what are actually required. So we've seen a shift overseas, that some companies and some brands are getting rid of best before dates, who've seen a campaign about sniffing your milk and going back to our intuition and being more connected to our food, which is actually probably why a bulk of food is wasted in the first place. But that's another conversation. But we need, for example, MPI at the table because they set the standards on food safety. We need the manufacturers, the goodmen fielders of fronteras who are involved in kai commitment at the table because they put these dates on their product and they arguably want the meat in at that best before date, 'cause that's when it tastes the best. And then we need retailers at the table because that's when they do their markdowns or when they donate to food rescue organizations who we also need at the table because we want to make sure they still have it. So it's not as simple as saying, "Maybe let's get rid of best before." It's about having all these people at the table to make that change and have the impact. - Everything you've described so far sounds like people being well-behaved within these silos and within the constraints that they've inherited. Have you come across malicious behavior? Have you found that there are bad actors in this world so that your efforts are not just about information but actually about politics or about holding people to account? - Change is hard, right? So we build our businesses and our lifestyles around the settings and rules that we have. And so when you say to someone who's running a food business a farmer or a grower or producer or even a retailer, we want to change the rules. That's going to mean, potentially I'm going to mean some pain for them, right? Some difficult things. So it's not about bad actors. It's about people kind of going, "Well, I've built my business around these sets of rules "and now you want to change the rules "and that's going to disrupt my business." Maybe they're not going to always be super enthusiastic about that. So it really is about telling the story and trying to create working together to create positive outcomes for everybody. So if the change happens, it's going to be a good change for everybody. And that's why the work that Caitlin does is so important because her focus is on bringing everybody to the table and dealing with some of these really wicked questions around how do you change the system and carry everybody along on the journey? - She's sounding so much like a politician. It's almost like a TV. - Oh, I wonder why. I'm a politician. - Sometimes when he answers my questions, I say, "Get out of politician mode." - I'm a politician of the past. I think I might be sitting next to a politician of the future. - Oh, stop. - But what do you think, Caitlin, dude? When you present information to people, do they say, "Oh, thank you very much. "I will change my behaviour as a result." - I have a little simplification. - Is that how it works? - No, it's not as simple as that, but I also don't think they're about actors. I think they're competing priorities. I got into food waste because it was a pretty easy sell. I thought it just made sense. I always loved business. I thought it made sense commercially and environmentally and socially as it does. But that's why I got into it. And every conversation I have, you very quickly get on the same page with someone because they agree you shouldn't waste food. So I don't think they're about actors or there's malicious intent. However, as I said, processes and systems lock things in place and they're competing priorities, like selling enough food, producing enough, so enough is bought, so enough is on the shelves, so enough is bought, so enough is eaten. And so at each stage, you have your main priority and food waste reduction may be secondary, or you may not even be aware that there is another option. So if we go back to growers as an example, a lot of their surplus food is tilled back into the soil. And growers think that is a wonderful way to use that surplus because it gives nutrients back into the soil. Or a bunch of their surplus is fed to animals. And they think that's a great way to help their farmer mate up the road and make a couple of extra bucks. So from that perspective, it is, but from an emissions perspective, it doesn't actually make sense to grow all this food or from a cost perspective, all this food that's edible for humans and give it to animals. And if we're looking-- and now hierarchy, we believe it should be fed to people first. So there are so many different frames of reference that people have at any given time and only a small amount of capacity that we all have to choose to step into another frame. So that's my job is to quickly understand what frame of reference they're using and see how I can nudge them a little bit into a slightly uncomfortable space where I've got someone else asking a really polarizing question and then we can kind of merge into the middle of it. Yeah, sure. That sounds like you're being very well behaved yourselves. Tell me about in the time we've got remain, what are the levers of change that are making a difference? And you mentioned Caitlin, there are examples overseas where food waste is being reduced. So what has worked there and what do you think would work here? And I don't know if you can prioritise them, but what are the most best things to do? Well, I'll start wide and then maybe you can go a bit pointy and I think, I mean, it sounds pretty naff, but a food waste strategy is the number one thing that a country needs. Knowing what we don't know. Knowing where we're headed. I think we have so many great actors working on food waste, doing the marquee. A lot of siloed, a lot of disjointed. If we had a strategy knowing our direction and yes, knowing what we waste. So University of Otago is working on a food waste baseline at the moment. There are a lot of data gaps. They just had to scrounge what data we have, which is not much. So there will be gaps in that. So understanding measurement. So we can have a baseline and see where we should invest our energy and our resources because there's only so much we can do looking at Australia who have a strategy and a baseline and funding for food waste research and action. There's only so much we can kind of borrow what they do and say that it's right for New Zealand. So strategy and measurement are the two key things. And then the third and it's said to be the second best action a country can take is a voluntary agreement. So, kay commitment, which I'm leading at the moment, is one of those. And we've been funded for a few years by government, but in other countries, it's more of a becomes BAU. And that's because these large businesses who hold a lot of the responsibility and the power to change behaviour upstream and downstream and influence decisions up and downstream can do that and do that generally through one of these. So we've seen in the UK, they're about to introduce, hopefully, mandatory reporting on food waste. So all businesses need to measure report on their food waste. And that hasn't happened across the board. And that is being led by 30 of their largest businesses. That's because they've already been measuring and they've seen that there's only so much they can do if they don't have everyone else doing it with them. Yes, that's interesting. They're measuring it and it's probably a function of their climate reporting. Right? It's come out of that sort of TCFD framework. Yeah, well initially, they were actually in the Courtole commitment, which was a voluntary agreement like kay commitments. The watch commitment? That's called the Courtole commitment. So we based out our model off theirs. So they signed up to that and they started measuring and acting and collaborating through that. And then that's that kind of started about 12 years ago. So that's much before climate related disclosures and those sorts of things. But absolutely, we see silver phone farms as a part of this commitment. And the reason they signed up is because they have to be transparent with their global customers about what they're doing. And if they don't have a framework as to how to do that, then they're behind, you know, in the international competition. Yeah, interesting. All right, so you mentioned three things. The first was having a strategy would be a start, information and data to feed into that and then a commitment to working together to actually solve it and a serious commitment to reduce. Yes, I am hesitant to just say commitment because this is, you know, they pay a fee, they put a lot into it, their hands on measurement, it's not a badge on the website. So I think you can have a commitment and you can have a commitment. Yes, OK. Ian, what would you add to that list? I'm going to start with what I don't think we should do, which we're inclined to do too much of, which is put the onus on individuals and households to do things which are either hard to do or inconvenient to do or expensive to do. So we often say, you know, knowing that so much food waste does come from households, we say, oh, the onus should be on households to compost more or to use their curbside recycling or to buy products which, you know, are going to be less wasteful or what have you. And so we try to get a lot of that. Thank you, Malcolm. We put a lot of that onus on the individuals. And yes, individual behaviour changes is important, but who are the people in this system who really have power? It is the large businesses and the government. And so we do need large businesses to take on things like the kind of commitment to work with Caitlin and her team and to make a real commitment. And we need the boards of. of corporates to make this a priority and not just for publicity sake, but to actually make some real commitments to reducing their food waste and taking measures not only to reduce their own food waste but to participate in a system and to change the system from within in a way that reduces food waste. But of course there's a role for government here as well. These things are not going to just happen by themselves. We've talked about the fact that the current market does not incentivise it. So we need some market changes. We need the regulations to change. We need funding for activities that are going to help make the change. And from my sector we think there is a good case for funding food rescuers in operation, not just because it distributes food to people who need it, but because it is part of the things that we need to do to reduce food waste. So government can play a huge role because they set the rules, but they can also put resources behind things that are demonstrated or are really likely to affect change. And then what you've heard from Cross-Cateland and myself again is going to require everybody playing together. But let's make the people who can actually affect change the ones who are responsible for this. Of course it's great when households find ways to reduce their food waste, but households doing it on their own is not going to bring about the change we need. We need the big players, the governments and the corporates to do that. And what is the appetite within government? And there may be a changing government and a change of attitude? Yeah, I actually think the government is going through a process at the moment of determining what it's going to do with things like waste minimisation. We know the previous government increased things like the waste minimisation levy and that means there is some resource available. And in our interaction with the current environment minister, she has said she's looking at the way that levy can be used and distributed. So what activities are they going to get behind? And so we're interacting with the government in good faith. But believes they are going to want to make best use of the resources they've got available. A group of us from Food Rescue sat down with Andrew Hoggard because he is the food safety minister. And obviously that has a big role in what we do. But Andrew is a farmer. And coming back to your point, no farmer wakes up every morning and says, "I'm really looking forward to wasting a third of what we grow." Andrew really understood it, at party, free market era, really understood the importance from a social licence perspective, but also from an economic perspective of trying to reduce the amount of waste in the system. So I think there's an enthusiasm there, but it is a new government and they are just in the process of figuring out what their approach that this is going to be. Let's finish on a little production. What does this look like in five years time, Caitlin? The food system? Yes. And you will work. I think it looks like every actor in the whole food system, because we can't talk about food waste as a sector. It shouldn't be a sector. I refer to it as a sector, but we don't need a sector. We are part of the food system. So the whole food system, every stakeholder, understanding where the waste is and understanding what to do about it. I think it's that simple. Ian, you get the last word, which is that's how to say one more thing. Because I want to challenge someone you've recently had on the podcast, actually a little bit controversial. My friend Mike Casey was on here recently, doing brilliant work, obviously. But he did say that the low hanging fruit of the climate crisis is energy and as people changing electrifying their homes, I really want to challenge Mike. And I, because I truly believe the low hanging fruit of the climate crisis is food waste. And when you start to understand the embodied emissions and the fact that sometimes there is investment for businesses at the household level that isn't, you can actually save money very quickly as well as reducing emissions. So those are the two things that people see without a big capital expenditure, just like checking those dates on the Becky and milk. Exactly. My very quick prediction for five years time is that things will be better but not fixed. I think it is food rescuers. We kind of hope that in five years time, there might be less supply from surplus for us. And we're looking more at kind of intentional giving of food rather than relying on food surplus as a supply line for us. But I think there will still be surplus in the system but we'll be doing a better job of controlling that over production and have better systems in place to reduce the incidence of surplus. But I don't think we'll be right at the end of the tunnel in five years time, but I'm very confident we'll have taken some pretty big strides in the right direction. Right. Caitlin, Ian, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for listening to this climate business. If you like the show, please rate us as it helps others to find us. Carpietiano.