Advertisement
Hong Kong environmental issues
OpinionComment
Thomas Tang
Thomas Tang

Opinion | How Covid-19 offers Hong Kong a chance to tackle food waste and poverty

  • Food that is edible and nutritious is often still thrown away, but it can be rescued and given to vulnerable communities
  • It is sad that Hong Kong tolerates so much urban poverty among disadvantaged groups who should not be overlooked, let alone suffer from hunger and want

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
A worker at the Grand Hyatt Hotel packs up excess food to give to a charity. Photo: Nora Tam
Thomas Tang

The way we treat our food often mirrors the way we behave. Food is important for our sustenance and our survival, yet we are wasteful and almost disrespectful with what we have. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, about one-third of all food produced globally goes to waste.

Advertisement

It has other implications, too – about 25 per cent of the world’s freshwater supply is used to grow food that ends up uneaten. Wasteful food habits are a shocking testament to our modern lifestyles and disregard for resources.

In Hong Kong, the recently released Waste Blueprint reports that we have reduced the daily disposal of food waste to around 0.3kg per capita, down by 17 per cent from 2013. However, this still amounts to a whopping 820,000 tonnes annually that ends up in our landfills.
Advertisement
From a climate perspective, this is worrying as the methane that is emitted by rotting food has a greenhouse effect 20 to 30 times that of the carbon dioxide that comes from burning fossil fuels. Even allowing for the clutch of organic composters that the government has set up, our carbon reduction aspirations have a long way to go.

Food leftovers are a big contributor to this problem. Our lifestyles encourage banquet-style dining. It is not to say that celebrating happiness and joyful occasions is bad, but how we do so can be damaging. It is common after banquets to see food that is still edible and nutritious being scooped up and bagged for disposal.

Advertisement