Auckland engineering students are turning wasted bread into flour in a trial that could cut food waste for Coasties.

At University of Auckland, civil and environmental engineering students have teamed up with Auckland upcycling company Rescued Kitchen to study flour made from unsold supermarket loaves.

Bread is one of the most wasted foods in the world, with about ten percent of all manufactured bread ending up as waste.

Globally that is around 900,000 tonnes a year, including roughly 24,000 tonnes in New Zealand, much of it headed for landfill.

In a course led by senior lecturer Dr Febelyn Reguyal, students ran a life cycle assessment comparing Rescued Kitchen’s bread flour with imported wheat flour from Australia.

They looked at energy use, emissions, land use and water consumption.

Their reports to co-founders Diane Stanbra and Royce Bold found the upcycled flour uses far less water, land and fossil fuels and produces much lower carbon emissions.

Reguyal says the project gives students real-world practice in tackling industry problems.

“These findings will guide the Rescued team by identifying which stages and processes can further improve environmental performance,” she says.

By June 2025, Rescued Kitchen had already processed more than 170 tonnes of surplus bread, fruit and vegetables and saved over 75,000kg of CO₂ emissions.

For households on the Hibiscus Coast, that kind of work points to a future where less of the weekly shop ends up in landfill and more of it is baked back into something useful.

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