About Kai Commitment

Kai Commitment is an agreement between leading food sector businesses designed to reduce food waste and related emissions across Aotearoa New Zealand’s food supply chain.

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The framework

Kai Commitment provides a framework for action and aims to become a community of best practice in food waste prevention and reduction within Aotearoa New Zealand’s food industry.

Collective action and collaboration is essential if we are to build a sustainable food system. This platform provides the opportunity to collaborate in a pre-competitive setting to address issues across the supply chain, which can only be solved together.

Kai Commitment Signatories set their own Food Waste Action Plan (FWAP) to enable each business to:

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Set a reduction target to create ambition
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Measure food waste (using international best practice) to understand the problem and inform solutions
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Take action to reduce food waste through better design, improved efficiency and innovate for new ways to donate good food or reuse food waste
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Lead consumers, staff and supply chain partners to waste less food; create impact at scale through collective reporting and industry collaborative activities
Target, Measure, Act, Collaborate framework

Each Food Waste Action Plan is delivered and reviewed annually with support from the Kai Commitment team.

The roadmap

Signatories commit to measure food waste, set a reduction target and design an action plan for reduction. The Kai Commitment phase 1 will run for three years. Your business can join at any time.

Kai Commitment Roadmap 2022-2025: 2022 – Design; Launch & Engage; 2023 – Enact; Collaborate; 2024 – Grow; 2025 – Transform

The Signatory Journey: Year One

The Kai Commitment is designed to ease your business into the practice of measuring food waste, analysing the results and setting actions for food waste reduction. 

The framework can be paced to suit your business and internal timeframes but generally will involve an annual cycle of setting food waste measurement, reporting and reduction activities and a timetable for delivery and review. Here is what the first year will look like:

1-3 months

Step 1
Getting
started

  • Onboarding
  • Intro to measure
  • Draft FWAP
By 6 months

Step 2
Measure and share

  • Locate Data Capture Sheet
  • Populate data
By 9 months

Step 3
Analyse and report

  • Analyse results
  • Hotspot analysis
By 12 months

Step 4
Set final FWAP

  • Set FWAP and delivery
  • Include targets
Collaborative action

The Kai Commitment project team will help Signatories to establish the Target, Measure, Act framework within their business. Signatories will also be invited to attend huis to scope and initiate a programme of collaborative activity, receive insights and meet each other.

Annual, anonymised reporting

This will feed into an annualised anonymised report of aggregate food waste that has been measured and report on progress of the programme.

For producers, manufacturers, preparers or retailers of food