39311 (2025). Hon Willow-Jean Prime to the Associate Minister of Education
Written Question
Published date: 22 Aug 2025
39311 (2025). Hon Willow-Jean Prime to the Associate Minister of Education: How many, if any, school lunches were wasted during the week of August 4th 2025, expressed as an overall number?
Hon David Seymour: I am advised by the Ministry of Education that surplus counts for meals not eaten at the end of lunch service are being monitored and used for continuous improvement of the programme.
One of the external model suppliers, the School Lunch Collective (SLC), publishes surplus meal data on their website daily here: https://www.schoollunchcollective.co.nz/.
From 4 to 7 August 2025, the SLC delivered 406,189 meals. Of these meals, 10.2 percent (41,460) were returned to the supplier’s kitchen.