18 Oct 2017

Every hour about 2200 loaves of bread are thrown away in New Zealand – making it our most wasted food item.

To demonstrate the scale of this wastage, engineering students at the University of Canterbury today built a pyramid made from 2283 loaves of bread. 

The construction was an awareness-raising event organised by Christchurch City Council’s Solid Waste Team and another group called Love Food Hate Waste.

The 2.5 metre high by 2.5 metre wide structure which weighed 1.7 tonnes took about three hours to build in the Students Association Building on campus this morning.

Research shows that 16-24 year olds and large households are the groups most likely to waste food so the bread pyramid was chosen as a dramatic way to educate students.

Stephanie Huet, of the Council’s Solid Waste Team, says New Zealanders throw away more than 122,000 tonnes of food a year, including about 20 million loaves of bread. That amount of food (worth about $872 million) would feed Dunedin’s population for two years.

“The message we want to give is don’t waste bread, look at how awesome it is as an ingredient.”

Stephanie says that bread should be stored in the freezer to keep it fresh and stop it going mouldy. She suggested making a “meal in a mug” with the last two slices of a loaf or making croutons for soup, bread and butter pudding or French toast. Cheese rolls, fish cakes, croquettes and bread aioli are other recipe options

Council and Love Food Hate Waste staff gave students tips and recipe cards about how to use crusts and bread ends so they can be eaten instead of thrown away.

Master Chef personality Jax Hamilton was a special guest giving cooking demonstrations with recipes using bread as a key ingredient.

Love Food Hate Waste Spokeswoman Jenny Marshall says the amount of bread wasted can be hard to visualise. “The bread pyramid is a great way to show people the scale of the problem. Wasting 20 million loaves is almost too big to comprehend but physically seeing how much we waste per hour really brings it home. Many people aren’t aware of how much a few stale or mouldy slices, or crusts, can add up to.  Yet crusts and bread ends make up 40 per cent of a loaf of bread so if your children won’t eat their crusts you can be throwing out 22 loaves worth of bread every year without even realising it."

* All of the loaves used to create the pyramid are being gifted to selected schools around Christchurch and to university students. Members of public can collect bread from the Community Fridge and Pantry New Brighton (46 Hawke Street) today from 3.30pm until 4.30pm.