According to the United States Department of Agriculture and Foreign Agriculture Service, Hong Kong is the ninth largest importer of baked goods in the world with imports valued at US$870 million.
In fact, it is expected that Hong Kongers will chomp their way through a market predicted to hit US$3.86 billion in revenue by 2024. That’s a lot of dough.
Walk down any main street in Hong Kong, and the evidence that HKers love baked goods is everywhere.
Bread, rolls, sweet and savoury pastries, and a plethora of cakes and the famous egg tarts, are all on offer at traditional Chinese bakeries and modern, artisanal Western-style bakeries.
However, the baked food market as a whole contributes significantly to food waste.
There are a couple of dirty secrets about some bakery practices in Hong Kong that are hard to swallow. For instance, it is common to find freshly baked sliced bread on the shelves missing their ends.
Where are they? In the bin. Not saved to be made into breadcrumbs or fed to ducks. Every single end slice is tossed into the trash along with other garbage.
Another practice is slotting the bakery purchases into a small plastic takeaway bag. You don't want to make a mess or get your hands sticky when eating your favourite bun, right? However, when someone is buying for their colleagues as well, the standard practice by the bakery is to use a separate plastic bag for every single piece in the total order e.g. five items go into five individual plastic bags.
Putting Global Food Wastage In Perspective
Approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted each year, amounting to about 931 million tonnes. This figure represents roughly 1.3 billion tons of food intended for human consumption that is wasted, valued at about US$1 trillion. Bread ends are just a drop in the food ocean.
Developed countries waste food at the retail and consumer levels, while in developing countries, losses often occur during production and post-harvest stages.
The production of wasted food consumes 21% of freshwater, 19% of fertilizers, and occupies 18% of cropland.
Global Food Waste Statistics
In 2022, households globally wasted over 1 billion meals daily, resulting in 1.05 billion tonnes of food waste. This equates to 132 kilograms per person. Households accounted for 60% of this waste, followed by food services (28%) and retail (12%).
Globally, over a third of all food produced (2.5 billion tons) is lost or wasted annually, with one third of this occurring during food production. Food waste results in the loss of roughly 24% of the total food calories produced worldwide.
Commonly Disposed Food
The most commonly wasted foods include a variety of items that are often discarded due to spoilage or lack of consumption.
Bread, milk, potatoes, fruits, salad greens, deli items, eggs, meat, and carrots are among the top foods frequently wasted.
Besides bread slices, litres of milk get poured down the sink, and sacks of potatoes are thrown away annually. Fruits like bananas and apples are also frequently discarded due to their quick ripening.
So called ‘ugly’ vegetables that don’t conform to what people expect, like a misshapen tomato, a wonky carrot or straight banana, get binned even before they reach the shop floor.
HK’s Smart Food Waste Bin Initiative
Inspiration for this article came from an accidental discovery. Cutting through a public housing estate in Quarry Bay, I came across a Smart Food Waste Bin.
Over 700 of these have been installed by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) in 213 public housing estates across Hong Kong. These smart bins ‘swallow’ raw food, plastic wrapped food waste, cooked food, and spoiled leftovers.
As an incentive, residents scan a QR code on an app to open the bin and receive reward points once the recycling of their food waste is complete. These points can then be used for food, necessities, or donated to selected charities.
According to EPD, household food waste recycling has increased to 60 tonnes per day compared to 1.4 tonnes per day in July 2022. That’s a staggering increase of about 43 times.
Hong Kong Waste Management
Earlier this year, the HK Government deferred a plan that was to force residential and non-residential premises to pay for all waste disposal based on quantity. Instead, the Government will focus on public education, promotion, and recycling facilities.
Hong Kong can currently receive and treat 600 tonnes of food waste each day at three organic resource recovery centres.
This is compared to an average 11,100 tonnes of municipal solid waste (MSW) disposed daily at landfills in Hong Kong. One stand out stat is that 25 tonnes of pig waste is processed per day.
The EPD is committed to building a network of innovative waste-to-energy (WtE) facilities. This includes modern WtE incinerators and food waste treatment plants. The goal is to reduce reliance on landfills for waste disposal and instead turn waste into valuable energy sources.
Plough to Plate
A few years ago I became interested in the whole plough to plate (also known as farm to fork, gate to grocer). I was interested in how food was produced, distributed, and manufactured, and ultimately consumed.
I read books, watched documentaries, and understood just how the supply chain had become super fine tuned to feed people. How convenience had centralised food production and how manufacturing changed forever. Of course, we all witnessed what happened to the supply chain when the pandemic occurred; it broke.
[As an aside, I don't know why the Fast Food Nation movie turned out to be a poor representation of the book. There are, however, scenes about food meat production which are hard to watch.]
It’s worth reading about the food supply chain to get an understanding of how consumerism changed the way food is produced and sold because, ultimately, this has led to the food wastage crisis the world is experiencing today.
Make no mistake, the amount of food that ends up in the bin on a daily basis is a food crisis. While older generations and cultures had it drilled into them about not wasting food, leaving a clean plate, not taking food you can't eat, etc., this is, largely, disregarded today.
Because food became plentiful.
Supply chain management developments made it possible to eat seasonal vegetables all year round. Meat production went stratospheric to fund fast food fryers and grills.
Despite the gloom, there are global food wastage reduction programmes are gaining momentum across various regions, with a combination of government initiatives, and communities playing critical roles.
But, food waste reduction is something we should all be striving to be better at, even if that means eating the ends of bread.
If you liked this post, please check out some others including China's RMB2 Trillion Watermelon Market, Discovering Hailing Island, China, and Driving Holiday: Pedal To The Metal Boom?.
About Ivan Theodoulou
Ivan Theodoulou is founder of Eight PR, a PR agency in Hong Kong that specializes in tech, law, and corporate PR. He first visited China in 1987 by train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou and has since traveled extensively on the mainland and in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). Ivan passed his China driving test in March 2024 and now drives regularly in the GBA.
Places visited in China (by car, plane, train, high speed train, ferry, coach, bus) include: Beijing, Beijou, Chengdu, Dali, Daya Bay, Dongguan, Foshan, Ganzhou, Gaoming, Guangzhou, Hainan, Hailing Island, Heishan, Huizhou, Junan, Kunming, Lijang, Longjiang, Nanhai, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Shilin Yi, Shunde, Wuzhou, Xiamen, Yingde, Yinghe, Zhuhai, Zhaoqing.
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www.tasteofhome.com/article/most-wasted-foods/