Waste-free has always been her motto but until recently Kate Meads, aka the ''nappy lady'', has concentrated on helping parents reduce waste by using cloth nappies.
But after about 10 years of touring the country with the message, she has branched out by helping the Love Food Hate Waste campaign.
The campaign asked Ms Meads if she could help them by taking workshops to educate ''foodies'' about food waste and ways to reduce it.
After some research, Ms Meads was shocked to discover how much food waste New Zealand creates. The country wastes $872million a year on food people buy and throw away uneaten, including 20 million loaves of bread. Otago on its own throws away $45million a year in food.
To get a further idea of the problem she attended waste audits, including one in New Plymouth where they found 1kg of mince in a packet unopened and 2 pork chops in one bag.
''It adds up to an insane amount of food. It was quite disheartening to see first-hand.''
The research also made Ms Meads look at her own practices.
''It was a real eye-opener.''
She now planned better herself and discovered being slavish to best-by dates resulted in her wasting food.
''I'd look at the best-by dates and throw it out, even dried pasta. I probably used it the week before and it was fine.''
Now she takes food like that out of the packets and puts it in containers, forcing her to use her sense of smell and taste to decide when food was past its use-by date.
''Like cream cheese; if it's still sealed it's often fine. If there was mould on it I'd throw it away but my grandfather would cut it off cheese and eat the inside.
''I've realised my own bad habits. It's really changed my thoughts.''
In her new ''Food Lovers' Masterclass'' Ms Meads gets participants to confront these issues and advises people to go back to using their senses when deciding what not to eat before they throw food out.
She also teaches people to plan ahead and some of the things to avoid when shopping, like multi-buys which often meant one product ended up sitting on the pantry shelf until past its use-by date.
''Our planning is often just on our way home at night, thinking what we feel like.''
Bulk-buying was another area to avoid. Instead, people are urged to buy what they need when they need it.
''We teach people to get out of the mindset of those buying habits. We've got the habit of bulk-buying to save money but we end up throwing a lot of it away.''
An example is how people can buy apples all year round today instead of just seasonally, so people get sick of eating them.
Helpful tips are also shared, such as the fact eggs can be frozen, or different ways to use leftovers to avoid the reluctance to eat them such as putting a potato top on a casserole, or put it in a pie maker.
Leftovers such as cooked pasta can be frozen and then reused in soups to thicken them. Chicken carcasses and the ends of vegetables, can be frozen to make stock.
''My best leftover tip is for pizza, through the leftovers from the week. Put the chicken or onion or vegetables, cheese in a box in the freezer then when it's full you have the toppings for pizza night.''
You can do the same with unused camembert cheese. She advises to take it out the freezer, wrap it in pastry and pop it in the oven when a quick entree is needed.
Broccoli stalks were just as good as the heads and could be sliced up in stir-fry.
There is also those deep pockets of the freezer where food is often found months or years later and can be fine to cook, she says.
''Think of all those unidentified products in your freezer.''
Overall, she believes in the Love Food Hate Waste campaign as New Zealand is such a small country it could not afford to produce so much waste.
''It's important to take a step back and look at what we are doing.''
To see
Food Lovers Masterclass with Kate Meads, Dunedin City Library, April 1.
