The NGO that helps feed the needy while also doing something to tackle Hong Kong’s serious food waste problem

Every day at 3pm, Leung Kwan, 86, walks 10 minutes to a local NGO centre in Tai Po to collect vegetables free of charge. Leung, who lives alone nearby and relies on government’s subsidies, has been collecting free food from Food Grace for five years – each recipient is entitled to one leafy vegetable and one non-leafy vegetable, such as potatoes and tomatoes, every day. She says she goes there almost every day, except when there is a typhoon. “The food here helps me save some money and it tastes good as well,” she says. She says she likes pumpkin the most, although she has to do without when she does not come early enough and all supplies are gone. On Friday, she took some bitter melons and left her quota of leafy vegetables for others. “They are enough for me. I can save some vegetables for others who need them,” she says. She is one of 300 people – mainly elderly or living on government subsidies – who benefit from a food recycling programme run by local NGO Food Grace, which collects unsold but edible food from markets, and hands it out to the needy for free. The programme is aimed at reducing the city’s massive food waste and relieving the financial burden of the poor, according to the NGO. How can Hongkongers reduce city’s food waste mountain? “We want to help the needy while raising public awareness of the food waste problem,” Sunny Wong, project officer of Free Grace’s recourse development, says. Hong Kong has a serious waste problem. In 2017, 10,733 tonnes of municipal solid waste were sent to the city’s landfills every day, according to the Environmental Protection Department. That means each person disposed of an average of 1.45kg of waste per day. Some 3,662 tonnes of the daily figure was food waste – the largest constituent, followed by waste paper and waste plastics. In addition to this, despite being an international finance hub, Hong Kong still has more than 1.37 million people living in poverty, one-fifth of the total population, according to the Census and Statistics Department. Food Grace launched its food recycling programme in 2009, after witnessing the growing financial strains suffered by poor households when the global financial crisis swept the city a year earlier. As families struggled, food prices kept soaring. However, local supermarkets used to throw away unsold food products and destroy them to ensure their products were not consumed improperly by people, Wong says. “We saw these problems and we wanted to help tackle them,” he says. Hong Kong government can’t meet food waste target at new plant The organisation collects food that has been unsold but is still good for consumption – mostly vegetables, as well as rice, noodles and other items, such as dairy products, frozen food and bread – from 150 sellers in the city’s markets. They hand them out to about 200 people every afternoon from Monday to Friday at their three centres in Tai Po, Kwai Chung and Yuen Long – home to many poor households. To ensure the safety and hygiene of the food, the members of the organisation take relevant courses, and select only edible food for distribution. No meat or seafood products are handed out because they quickly go bad, Wong says. As of March last year, Food Grace had collected and processed more than 1,050 tonnes of food. But the programme has also met with doubts from the public. Some people questioned the quality of the food. “They asked if our food was edible. Many thought unsold food couldn’t be good,” Wong says. “So we explain to them when handing food out.” Wong attributes the problem to the lack of public awareness of food recycling. To make more people aware of the issue, the group gives workshops and lectures at universities and secondary schools. They also organise trips to other cities to learn about local food recycling policies and strategies. On a visit to Taiwan early this year, they found there were more policy incentives on food recycling, and the public benefits from up-to-date education on the issue. Primary school classmates, Maggie Pok Man-yu and Isaac So Chun-yuk – both 10 years old – have been volunteering at the Tai Po centre during the summer holidays, helping select vegetables and handing them out to recipients. “I have learned to cherish food. I love eating vegetables, and now I take what I can’t finish back home, instead of throwing them away,” So says. With Mid-Autumn Festival around the corner, the organisation is working on a mooncake recycling project, collaborating with local bakeries and distributing mooncakes to the public. “We will hand out the mooncakes ahead of the festival so those who receive them will share the joy,” Wong says.