China looks to curb food waste as festive season dawns
- Lawmakers on Tuesday began deliberating a draft law on preventing food waste, the first of its kind in the country
- President Xi Jinping has urged everyone to cut down on what he called ‘shocking and distressing’ levels of wastage
Zhang Yuping, a waitress at a pizza restaurant in Beijing has mixed feelings about the festive season. It is usually a prime time for the catering business, which means more income, longer hours and more food waste to handle.
“I’m happy to see customers relaxed and enjoy the festival atmosphere in our restaurant,” Zhang said. “But I’m also distressed to find piles of plates of pizzas, chicken wings, chips and drinks are left over with some completely untouched.
“My colleagues and I have to take an extra hour to clear it up every day this week. The amount of waste is astonishing,” she said.
Throwing away or destroying food is a global problem. In 2016, France banned grocery stores from throwing away edible food and Italy passed a similar law to punish food waste.
In China, the problem is significant. Chinese consumers wasted 17 million to 18 million tonnes of food in 2015, enough to feed 30 million to 50 million people for a year, according to a 2018 report by the Institute of Geographic and National Resources Research and the World Wide Fund for Nature.