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

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