GE1205 Group Project

Final Written Report

Topic: Commercial and Domestic Food Waste in Hong Kong

Session: S03
Group Members
Mok Tsz Kwan

5402 9846

Yu Hoi Ying

5308 4757

Chang Ka Chun

5305 3129

Poon Ying Tung

5419 3357

Leung Yui

5307 8935

Tam Wing Fei

5440 8674

___________________________________________________________________________

Content
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Abstract
Current Situation of Food Waste in Hong Kong
Causes of Food Waste
Consequences of Food Waste
Reactions from the Government and NGOs
Economic Solutions
Non-economic Solutions
Conclusion
Reference

1) Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to idenetify food waste problem in Hong Kong and to provide
feasible and effective solutions. Findings show that the food waste problem in Hong Kong is
serious which causes short term and long term pronblems. Despite the efforts of different
stakeholders, the ease of food waste problem still does not get much progress. The problem
needs to be handled promptly, otherwise damages may become irreversible. Hence, we
include the current situation of leftover problem in Hong Kong for readers to have a look of
the problem. We also identify the main cuases and consequences to explain such a
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phenomenon and its seriousness. We also make a summary of the actions taken by the
Government and NGOs to let readers understand the progress of solutions to leftover
problem. In the last part of this paper, solutions are given from economic and non-economic
perspectives to cope with the foos waste problem.
2) Current Situation of Food waste in Hong Kong
Food waste is any waste, whether raw, cooked, edible and associated with inedible parts
generates during food production, distribution, storage. meal preparation or consumption of
meals. (Environmental Bureau, 2014) Among all Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) , 41.7% of
it came from putrescibles in 2012 according to Enviornmental Bureau. Putrescibles are
various types of organic waste that decompse and creta odour, inculding food waste and
yard waste. In fact, around 90% of putrescibles is made up of food waste and approximately
3,600 tonnes of food waste is thrown away everday. Per person food waste in Hong Kong is
0.47 kg, which is relatively high when comparing to that of South Koera and Taiwan. The per
person food waste are 0.3g and 0.34 kg respectively (Friends of the Earth HK, 2012). For the
food waste source, two-third of Hong Kong food waste source came from households while
one-third came fromfood related commerial and industral (C&I) sources. For C&I sources,
the amount doubled from 2002 to 2012. According to Feeding Hong Kong, supermarkets
disposed 29 tonnes of edible food waste per day in 2012. Almost half of C&I food waste
source came from banquet e.g. Chinese wedding banquet and spring reception, according to
Friends of Earth.
3) Causes of Food Waste
Causes of food waste mainly due to consumers comsumption behavior and business cultue
and manner. Consumers have problems of over buying, over ordering and over preparing
because they may forget and can not comsume it on time, too picky on food comsumption
and try to show generosity to guests. For producer, business cultue and manner cuases
continuous increase of C&I food waste. Selling of superb food experience and high quality
fresh food from banquet and buffet creates large amount of thrown away cooked and unfresh
food. In order to provides variety supply of choices, supermarket keeps buying different food
one-off. With bad inventory system and over-order manner, over supply happened and causes
wastage of food.
4) Consequences of Food Waste
4.1) Landfill Saturation

There are thousands of garbage from business, industry and residences need to be disposed
of. There are three landfills in Hong Kong South East New Territories (SENT), North East
New Territories Landfill (NENT) and West New Territories (WENT) Landfill, and it is
estimated that these landfills will be fully saturated in 2015, 2017 and 2019 respectively
(Environmental Protection Department, 2010). The situation is getting worse in these years,
because people have no improvement in their wasteful lifestyle and are not aware of their
civic responsibility on reducing waste, especially food waste, which is the main municipal
solid waste in Hong Kong. With the rare land resources in Hong Kong, we cannot offer more
land to extend or construct a new landfill. Therefore, enormous amount of food waste must
create a burning issue of landfill saturation.
4.2) Environmental Damage
In Hong Kong, the majority of food waste ends up in landfill. Not only leading to rapid
depletion of our already limited landfill space, but also imposing heavy burden on the
environment. In Hong Kongs unban climate, emissions from decomposing food have a
serious negative impact on air quality. Because food waste is an organic waste which
decomposes easily, it does not only produce wastewater, but also promotes the spread of
disease and releases significant quantities of methane and carbon dioxide, which are
greenhouse gases that capture and retain heat in the atmosphere. This will exacerbate
greenhouse effect and global warming, then bring about negative impacts like economic,
agricultural impacts and effects on Aquatic systems.
4.3) Inefficiency of Existing Food Waste Disposal Schemes
The government has been seeking more feasible approaches to alleviate the landfill issue. It
plans to extend the three landfills and build incinerators (Extension of landfill, 2013). But on
the first hand, the expansion plan has aroused fierce opposition from residents near landfill
sites. Local residents believe that it will result in problems near their living district and
neighbourhoods like odors, air pollution, environmental hygiene, dust and worsening
transport which is not fair. The expansion causes residents strong discontent and affects
social harmony. From environmental perspective, incinerators produce carbon dioxide when
burned, which is greenhouse gas that deteriorate global warming. Some incineration facilities
also pollute the air and water, while reclamation and laying of submarine cables will destroy
the ecological environment.
5) Reactions from the Government and NGOs
5.1)Recations from HK government

As disposing food waste is not a sustainable and environmental desirable solution, the
Environmental Protection Department launches a food waste recycling partnership
programme. It cooperates with commercial and economical sector, such as hotels association,
formulates guidelines on food waste management and take the respsonsiblity for cleaning the
collection bin for food waste. Moreover, the government strengthens the promotion and
education. For instance, it implements the Food Wise Hong Kong Campaign, so as to
promote the message of treasuring food and buy the amount of food that are needed. In
addition, the government is planning to recycle food waste, in order to generate renewable
energy.
5.2 )Recations from NGO
Charity organization such as Food Angle, has lauched food recycle scheme. It recycles food
that are unwanted and disposed but still can be eaten, then cooks into meals to serve the
poors. In addition, some charity organizations such as Hong Kong Outlying Womens
Association, it recycle and turn food waste to be fertilizer in islands such as Cheung Chau.
6) Economic Solutions
6.1) A quantity-based food waste charging scheme on the food and beverage sector
For the food and beverage sector, some restaurants had already tried some practices to reduce
food waste. For example, they may offer Less Rice, One Dollar Less option or take-away
packaging of unfinished food for their customers. They may also join the Food Waste
Recycling Partnership Scheme and try to separate food waste for recycling. However, the
existing measures and practices are not effective and efficient enough. The progress of
reducing food waste is not remarkable. Among the Material-balance model, reduce is the
most favored option, thereby we suggest a more aggressive and challenging solution.
We suggest to implement a quantity-based food waste charging scheme to the food and
beverage sector. The concept is similar to producer responsibility scheme, which stands for
the principle of polluter pays. This scheme aims to encourage restaurants to produce less
food waste as they can pay less if they produce less. This scheme also encourages people to
rethink about their business manners and consumption behaviors and be more responsible to
the environment.
It would be a powerful economic incentive for people to reduce food waste as there are many
successful cases. For example, the amount of plastic shopping bags disposed of at landfills
has dropped dramatically from 660 million in 2009 to 120 million in 2013 after the
implementation of The Environmental Levy Scheme on Plastic Shopping Bags. Moreover,

the implementation of quantity-based waste charging scheme of Seoul and Taipei City also
shows the feasibility of this kind of ideas.
The food waste charge will be a tax imposed directly on the actual quantity of food waste
discarded by a restaurant. The food waste charge can be implemented as a per unit tax on
every unit of the food waste discarded.
Consider a simple case: one restaurant

The government imposes a constant per unit food waste tax (t) for every unit of food waste
discarded, hence tax (t) is the marginal tax. If the boss of the restaurant wants to reduce the
tax payment, he may carry out some measures to abate food waste.
For example, a restaurant may introduce a light-meal menu with smaller portion of food and a
relatively cheaper price. Ladies do not eat much may order this meal instead because of the
cheaper price. This measure can reduce food waste but it also incurs abatement cost. The
marginal abatement cost in this case is the decrease in profit caused by the decrease in price.

MAC is the Marginal Abatement Cost of the polluter. Just like the MC curve of a firm, we
assume MAC increases with more units of food waste abated. The boss of the restaurant can
compare MAC and MT and choose the least-cost option (A).
As different restaurants will have different marginal abatement costs, the efficient abatement
level set by the government can be achieved at a least-cost method eventually. Restaurants
with lower marginal abatement cost will do most of abatement. Moreover, the tax revenues
generated can be re-contribute to the recycling project which further mitigates damages to our
environment. It also encourages firms to actively investigate the possibility of different
measures so as to lower its abatement cost. However, restaurants might evade tax by illegally
disposing food waste. So, the monitoring costs may be high.
6.2) Buy One Get One Free Coupon (BOGOF coupon)
The family size of Hong Kong is really small, with average 2.9 people per household.
However, with such a small household size, Hong Kong Supermarkets still use bundling sale
to seduce consumers purchasing unnecessary food items. It is very unlikely for those small
household to consume all products within the short expiry date, especially those perishable
food items. Households contributes 11% of food waste produced in Hong Kong and 60% of
respondents purchase food item from supermarkets. Therefore, cutting the food waste source
from household is very important. Cooperating with supermarkets and issue Buy One Get
One Free Coupon is believed to be an effective way to reduce food waste. BOGOF Coupon is
a coupon which enable consumers to redeem their free food item later, for say, a month, and
therefore raises the flexibility of consuming the food item. It is suggested that governmen to
provide Pigouvian Subsidy to supermarkets to raises its production of BOGOF coupon to
equilibrium level. Here is the graphical illustration:

The original equilibium is at point A, since the supermarket only consider their own
production benefit. However, with the government pigouvian subsidy(the green dotted line),
the equilibrium shfited to point B. Supermarkets now produce at a level which also consider
the marginal social benefit. Therefore, the social benefits is now maximized. Food wastes is
also reduced.
6.3) Food trading mobile application
A food trading mobile application enables users to trade food which almost expires freely so
as to reduce potential leftover. The application operates like an online food store (e.g.
Walmart food market). Users are required to input some of their personal information to
create an account. If they find food which they cannot finish, they can simply take a picture
of the food and enter some basic information about the food, like food type, its name and
expiration date. During the process of uploading your food onto the app, the app will
automatically track your location and indicate it on Google map. At the same time, food are
categorized into three types of food waste labels in the app, namely Non-urgent, Semi-urgent
and Urgent. When all the information is entered, the system will classify them into
corresponding groups. Other users can check out the app regularly to see if there is any food
product they want. Once they find interested food, they may click the picture and know more
about the product. Once they have decided to get the food, they may click the contact
button to start a conversation with the food owner. Transaction method like delivery method
and venue and agreed price are totally up to users. Once they have come up with a mutually
agreed deal, users may pick up the food. Yet, there is still potential hazard to get food
products from strangers. Hence, the exchange is completely based on trust and willingness.

This mobile app turns potential food waste into new food products which is ready for sale in
a new food market. As demonstrated in the following graph, there is excess supply in the
original food market, causing the market equilibrium point cannot be reached. Now, with the
help of the app, the excess supply is brought to a new market and allow re-distribution in the
market. In addition, the app is cost effective as it requires a low operation cost. Eventually,
efficiency is achieved from sharing economy as the over-production can be consumed.
7) Non-economic Solutions
7.1) A Reminder Mobile Application
Every day, tons of food in Hong Kong are disposed as they are expired. The main reason is
that many Hong Kong people do not plan and consider how much they should purchase
beforehand. They usually tend to buy more than they really need. Among the food, most of
them are perishable. When the food bought from the supermarket is stored in the fridge,
majority of them are just left there and people just forget to eat them until they are expired.
Eventually, they are all sent to landfill sites.
A reminder mobile application can prevent leftover resulted from carelessness. After every
shopping time in the supermarket, you only have to scan all the barcodes on the food labels
using the reminder app. All the details of the food, such as expiration date, purchase date,
type of food etc., will then be automatically entered into the database. When the food is going
to be expired within 3 days, a reminder will be sent to remind people to eat or cook the food
as soon as possible. On the other hand, the more the reminders sent, the more aware towards
the quantity of food purchased people will be. If a person get too many notifications and
reminders after every purchase, he/ she may eventually realize that the amount of food
bought is more than what one really needs. Hence, during the next purchase, one will reconsider the amount of food needed based on past experiences. As a result, leftover in
household sector can be reduced.
7.2) Reducing food loss in farms
The Waste Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a British non-profit organization has
conducted an analysis of avoidable food waste in the world and has come out with a list of
top 100 food wasted. Potatoes and other unprocessed food, like fruit and vegetables, are at the
top of the list. These kind of food are wasted at three time the rate of meat. The major reasons
are that most of these fruit and vegetables are destroyed by pesticides during farming and
during the transportation process. On the other hand, before transporting the food from farms

to retail stores, most of them become overripe and may have cosmetic imperfections and are
usually treated as food waste and ended up in landfill sites.
To reduce food waste from the farms, we can actually turn the overripe or damaged but still
edible food into new food. For those which are damaged during the transportation or
packaging process, they are actually edible despite a damaged appearance which may not be
attractive to buyers. Hence, the supermarkets can actually sell them at a discounted price.
And for those overripe food, they can actually be converted into supplements for other food
products. For example, when farmers discover that a portion of tomatoes becomes overripe,
they can turn them into other food products which are also ready for sale, like tomato sauce.
In this way, we can prevent most of the food from becoming leftover.
7.3) Precise expiration date
There are various kinds of wordings to show expiration date of food products. For example,
best before, expire on and eat within X days of opening etc. The most common type is
best before. It means that the best taste of the food can be kept before the date. Yet,
generally speaking, most of them can actually be eaten after the expiration date shown for a
period of time.
What can be done is that the government should set a law regulating and unifying the
wordings used to show expiration date. In fact, to effectively reduce food waste, the wording
best before should be abandoned as most Hong Kong people actually misinterpret that the
best before date is the exact expiration date. They misunderstand that food can no longer be
eaten after that day as they have become rotten immediately after the date. They then toss the
food which is indeed still edible, creating more leftover and increasing the burden of landfill
sites. Restricting food producers to show the precise expiration date can delay the
expiration date. Consumers can get more accurate information about the food products, so
that the chance of disposing food mistakenly is lowered.
7.4) D.I.Y. leftover mobile application
Hong Kong people persuade convenience in daily life. When they discover some specific
kinds of food, such as food ingredients which needs further processing, is going to be
expired, they may choose to dispose them when they expire instead of making good use of
them.
A D.I.Y. leftover mobile application helps to plan how to cook and reuse the leftover. The app
contains a variety of recipes and tips for utilizing common types of leftover. Users are
required to insert details of the food products, including type of leftover, household size and
desired cuisine. The system will automatically analyze and match your leftover or almost9

expired food with the most suitable recipe. In this way, the leftovers become new dishes, so
that they are no longer food waste waiting to be sent to the landfill sites.
8) Conclusion
The leftover problem in both commercial and household sectors is getting worse. It can bring
about inevitable adverse impacts to the society, endangering our health and the environment.
We will be all suffering from these negative production and consumption externalities. To
ease the sutiable and stop the surging trend of the food waste. We should follow the 4 steps,
namely Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Recovery. These four steps cannot be done by only one
party. The government, Hong Kong citizens and food suppliers should spare no effort in
solving the problem. Only in this way can we make our society green and minimize the
marginal social cost.
9) Reference
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A. (n.d.). Waste Not, Want Not: 6 Technologies to Reduce Food Waste. Retrieved
October 02, 2013, from http://foodtechconnect.com/2013/10/02/waste-not-want-not-6technologies-to-reduce-food-waste/
. (2015, January 19). Retrieved from
http://cn.derekyang.us/product-expiration-date//
. Greeners Action. Retrieved from
http://www.greenersaction.org/gsc/public/foodwaste/2014_Oxfam/20140605_FW_Super
market_PR_final_web.pdf
Trends in Population and Domestic Householdsin Hong Kong. Retrieved from
http://www.census2011.gov.hk/pdf/Feature_articles/Trends_Pop_DH.pdf
Environmental Protection Department. (2010). Strategic Landfills. Retrieved from
http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/msw_strategi
c.html
Environmental Protection Department. (2015). Food Waste Management in HK.
Retrieved from
http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/environmentinhk/waste/prob_solutions/owt_food.htm
l
Feeding Hong Kong (2012). Food Waste Stats. Retrieved from
http://feedinghk.org/food-waste-stats/
Go. asis (2012). Food Waster per person. Retrieved from
http://www.go.asia/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/FW-FACT027.jpg
Friends of the Earth HK (NA). Sources of food waste. All about food waste.
Retrieved from: http://foodwaste.foe.org.hk/html/eng/c_cause_remain_food.php
Hong Kong General Education Association. (2012). Hong Kongs waste disposal
problem. Retrieved from http://hkls.org.hk/site/program_details.php?ID=23
Jennifer Ngo. (2013). South China Morning Post: Plans to expand landfills meet protests,
Tseung Kwan O residents tell panel they are tired of dump's stench. Retrieved from
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1251623/plans-expand-landfills-meetprotests
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