LettersTo reduce waste, Hong Kong must connect lunch to learning
Readers discuss the need to incorporate sustainability goals at the curriculum level and how to set young entrepreneurs in conflict zones up for success
If Hong Kong is serious about cutting waste, the classroom matters as much as the recycling bin. The government reported in April that an average of 350 tonnes of food waste were recycled in Hong Kong each day in 2025, with smart recycling bins in private housing estates now serving more than 270,000 households.
Yet, about 3,300 tonnes of food still end up in landfill every day, the largest single category of municipal solid waste the city produces. Bins and trucks deal only with the end of the pipeline. Prevention at source is ultimately a question of habit, and habits form early. That makes schools central to the effort.
However, too many schools treat food waste as a facilities issue rather than a teaching resource. Leftovers vanish from canteens unexamined, and the link between lunch and learning is rarely made.
The alternative was on display in Bangkok, Thailand this week, when SMP IL Kapten Fatubaa, a secondary school in a remote Indonesian border village, was named regional winner of this year’s AIA Healthiest Schools Competition, chosen from nearly 1,000 entries across Asia-Pacific. The school had been overwhelmed by banana peel waste generated by its own healthy eating drive. Rather than dumping the peels, students turned them into ice cream, compost and liquid fertiliser, a project spanning science, entrepreneurship and language learning that has benefited more than 1,000 people, including farmers.
What deserves attention is not the prize but the pedagogy. Waste became raw material for cross-curricular learning: pupils verified their products through laboratory testing, ran a banana-peel barter scheme and distributed goods through local cooperatives, building circular-economy skills and entrepreneurial confidence.