Did you know the average New Zealand household throws away around $1,364 worth of food every year?
That adds up to a staggering $3 billion worth of wasted food nationwide—or about 80 kilograms per household annually!
This amount of wasted food is equal to one year of meals for 536,000 Kiwis.
The good news? Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push Aotearoa’s total household food waste bill lower.
The 2025 Rabobank-KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey – undertaken in late July – found the average New Zealand household reported wasting 10.9% of the food they bought each week, back from 12.2% in the 2023 survey. This fall drove a drop in annual food waste per household (down to $1,364 from $1,510 in 2023) and a reduction in New Zealand’s overall food waste bill. This fell to $3.0 billion per annum from $3.2 billion (fall of 6.25%) despite marginal increases in weekly household food spend and the number of households.
What do we throw away?
In 2018, we gathered bags that were left out on the street for rubbish collection, opened them and separated out the food. We then measured it to get a picture of what Kiwis throw out. It was a gross but important thing to do. Only by realising what a problem food waste is, can we begin to solve it.
Scroll down to discover some the facts we uncovered during our last bin audits in 2018!
