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Singapore’s food rescuers salvage expired, ugly food to fight waste
- Singapore, which threw away 763,000 tonnes of food last year, is starting to get an appetite for reducing edible waste
- But as the movement gains momentum, businesses worry about liabilities
Reading Time:6 minutes
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Twice a week, Gary Lee makes his way to a childcare centre in central Singapore, not too far from his home.
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The 36-year-old logistics executive is there for an unlikely reason: the food. He collects leftovers from the childcare centre, which would otherwise be thrown away.
When This Week In Asia tagged along for one such trip, Lee collected two containers of multigrain rice, some vegetable soup, and a box of sliced cod fish with gravy.
Lee, who draws a stable salary and can afford to pay for meals, estimates the food is enough to last his family of five for nine meals, spread over three days.
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He belongs to a growing group of people in Singapore working in their own ways to reduce the city’s mountain of food waste.
The affluent Lion City generated more than 763,000 tonnes of food waste in 2018, a 34 per cent increase from 2008, when the figure stood at 568,000 tonnes. The recycling rate of food waste has remained low at not more than 17 per cent.
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