Despite reports of rising demand for handouts at food banks, Hong Kong's four supermarket chains throw out 29 tonnes of edible food every day, a green group says.
The discarded food would be enough to feed 48,000 three-person families.
'These supermarket chains have the ability and the responsibility to donate and recycle food waste,' said Michelle Au Wing-tsz, deputy environmental manager of Friends of the Earth. She said the four companies the group investigated - ParknShop, Wellcome, CR Vanguard and Jusco - held a 53 per cent share of Hong Kong's retail sector.
Au's team visited waste collection points for five outlets of the four chains from March to May. Each store disposed of an average of 135kg of food a day. One-third of the waste - 45kg - had not passed its expiry dates.
As the chains have 650 shops in Hong Kong, the group estimates that the total amount of wasted food was about 87 tonnes. About 29 tonnes of that was still edible.
Of the food that had been dumped, 47 per cent was vegetables, some still fresh and with packaging intact, Au said. Fresh fruit was also found, as were loaves of bread that were still five days away from their sell-by date.