A poster in the staff lunchroom caught my eye this week – it featured comedian Josh Thomson dressed as a stalk of broccoli.

It was one of a number of eye-catching posters promoting Love Food Hate Waste’s nationwide campaign to encourage Kiwis to meal plan, instead of letting food spoil in their fridges and end up in landfill.

Most households do some sort of basic meal planning, yet the average family still throws away $1510 worth of food a year. Not only is this a waste of money, but it’s bad for the environment as four per cent of our total greenhouse gasses in New Zealand come from food waste.

In fact, if food waste was a country, it would be the third largest producer of carbon emissions behind China and the United States.

We heard at Council last week about a food rescue service that operates in our district under the wing of Safer Mid Canterbury, and involves supermarkets and food wholesalers donating food that is nearing its best-by date to local foodbanks and other charity organisations.

That food is redistributed to vulnerable families, and in the past six months about 34 tonnes has been recycled in this good way.

Safer Mid Canterbury is one of the bigger agencies that Council provides operational funding to and every six months they report back to us about what they’ve achieved.

The funding provided by Council gives Safer Mid Canterbury a strong base to run a robust organisation that can access Central Government funding to itself run a huge range of programmes that support the people of Mid Canterbury, and many of these are based out of Community House.

Other agencies that reported back to us last week were the Ashburton Event Centre and Ashburton Performing Arts Theatre Trust, Sport Canterbury and the local Citizens Advice Bureau – these are always informative and interesting presentations, and I want to acknowledge the good work that is done by paid staff and volunteers in these organisations.

This week Councillors return to the chamber to continue their Annual Plan and budget discussions and this draft document will be refined and debated over the next months, shared with the community, and then finally adopted on 18 June.