Less Food Wasted? Changes to New Zealanders’ Household Food Waste and Related Behaviours Due to the 2020 COVID-19 Lockdown

Sustainability

Lisa Te Morenga¹  Paulien Decorte²  Isabelle Cuykx²  Lauranna Teunissen²  Charlotte De Backer²  Jillian Haszard³  Rajshri Roy⁴  Victoria Egli⁵  Sarah Gerritsen⁶  Emma L. Sharp⁷ 

[1] Centre for Hauora and Health, Massey University, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand;Department of Communication Studies, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium;Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand;Discipline of Nutrition, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand;School of Nursing, University of Auckland, Auckland 1023, New Zealand;School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand;Te Kura Mātai Taiao/School of Environment, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand;

关键词: food waste and loss prevention;    household waste;    COVID-19;    evaluation;    food purchasing;    cooking;   

DOI  :  10.3390/su131810006

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Food waste is a crisis of our time, yet it remains a data gap in Aotearoa New Zealand’s (NZ’s) environmental reporting. This research contributes to threshold values on NZ’s food waste and seeks to understand the impact of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown on household food waste in NZ. The data presented here form part of the ‘Covid Kai Survey’, an online questionnaire that assessed cooking and food planning behaviours during the 2020 lockdown and retrospectively before lockdown. Of the 3028 respondents, 62.5% threw out food ‘never’/‘rarely’ before lockdown, and this number increased to 79.0% during lockdown. Participants who wasted food less frequently during lockdown were more likely to be older, work less than full-time, and have no children. During lockdown, 30% and 29% of those who ‘frequently’ or ‘sometimes’ struggled to have money for food threw out food ‘sometimes or more’; compared with 20% of those who rarely struggled to have money for food (p < 0.001). We found that lower levels of food waste correlated with higher levels of cooking confidence (p < 0.001), perceived time (p < 0.001), and meal planning behaviours (p < 0.001). Understanding why food waste was generally considerably lower during lockdown may inform future initiatives to reduce food waste, considering socio-economic and demographic disparities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown