Why aren’t we encouraging food donations in Hong Kong when our landfills are full of edible waste?
Wendell Chan calls for the government to introduce a Good Samaritan law to encourage businesses to give, especially when poorer families often do not have enough affordable and nutritious food
Earlier this year, France became the first country in the world to ban food waste from supermarkets. And, this month, Italy adopted a new law to prevent one million tonnes of food from being wasted every year by encouraging supermarkets and farmers to donate food. Although the two countries employed widely different approaches, both have the same goals – to help the needy and stop food waste.
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It makes sense. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates, we produce more than enough food to feed 10 billion people, yet we have 800 million who are undernourished in a population of 7.4 billion. About 1.3 billion tonnes of food, equivalent to US$1 trillion, is wasted every year. Besides economic losses, that waste generates 3.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas yearly, making it the third-largest carbon emitter behind China and the US if it were a country.
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In Hong Kong, almost 40 per cent of our municipal solid waste is food. We estimate that businesses throw out HK$60 million worth of food yearly when almost half of low-income families lack reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. Why is food going into our already strained landfills? Although the government has paid much lip service to food waste reduction through its Food Wise campaign, it has done little to support the food donation initiative.