Access to Food in Hong Kong Poverty in Hong Kong

‘In affluent Hong Kong, it is easy to think of hunger as a problem that exists elsewhere: a problem of countries struggling with famine, warfare or abject poverty. But hunger is much closer to home than most people think: more than 1.5 million people in our city suffer from food insecurity.

Since the financial crisis of late 2008 and with the more recent dramatic increase in inflation, more and more people in Hong Kong are crossing the line from just getting by, to not being able to afford to eat three nutritious meals a day. These people include children, seniors and working families, refugees, migrant workers and the unemployed. They live in our communities. They work around us. They share many of the same interests and goals that we do.

While most of us think it could never happen here, the reality is that hunger does exist in Hong Kong, and it is our duty to stop it. We all need to tackle the issue of hunger here at home as well as continue to support the global fight against hunger and malnutrition.’

Source: http://feedinghk.org/hunger-in-hk/, accessed Sunday, 17 April 2016

Poverty Statistics in Hong Kong – 2012

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Task 1: In the following table, rank the statistics in order of importance (1 = most important and 10 = least important) as to how you see poverty in Hong Kong

Statistic Order of importance1 in 5 people in live in poverty

The poverty line for a one-person family is

HK$3,275 per month

40% of the Hong Kong population live in

subsidized public housing

100,000 people live in coffin, cage homes and

rooftops

Over 1,000 people are homeless

Hong Kong has highest income gap between

the rich and the poor of any developed

economy in the world

The minimum wage, introduced in 2011, is

HK$28 per hour

There are 650,000 working poor

300,000 children do not get 3 meals a day

1 in 3 seniors struggle to meet their basic

nutritional needs

Sources: Hong Kong Council of Social Services, Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, SOCO, Oxfam Hong Kong

Task 2: Considering your choice of the top-3 statistics regarding poverty in Hong Kong, explain why you chose these statistics as opposed to other statistics from the list.

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Food Waste

Food waste or food loss is food that is discarded or lost or uneaten. It can be cooked food or raw ingredient including any leftovers, bones, shells of crustaceous, eggshells and fruit peels. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous, and occur at the stages of production, processing, retailing and consumption.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_waste, accessed Sunday, 17 April 2016

Task 3: Can you think of three organizations/areas where people gather in Hong Kong that could have a problem with food waste? List them, and then identify some of the reasons for why the problem of food waste occurs in these places.

Food Waste Statistics in Hong Kong

Source: Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department (2011-2012)

Task 4: Calculation time!!!

(a) If 3200 tonnes of food are sent to the landfill every day, how many tonnes of food are disposed of in Hong Kong every year?

(b) How many double decker buses would be required to transport the food waste to the landfills every year?

(c) How many tonnes of edible food do supermarkets in Hong Kong dispose of every week?(d) How many years did it take Commercial & Industrial food waste to double in Hong Kong?

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Global food waste statistics

Food waste is also an issue around the world:

Globally, one-third of the food produced for human consumption is lost, about 1.3 billion tonnes

10% of developed countries’ greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten

An estimated 20 to 40% of UK fruit and vegetables are rejected before they reach the shops, mostly

because they do not match the supermarkets’ strict standards

In North America and Oceania, 50 percent of the fish and seafood caught is wasted

According to the UK’s Waste Resources and Action Programme (WRAP), if we stopped wasting

food that could be eaten, it would be equivalent to taking one in five cars off the road

Source: Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal by Tristram Stuart (2009)

Task 5: The information on global food waste statistics is making a reference to some concept we have

studied before. Can you remember what this concept is?

Composition of Municipal Food Waste (MSW) in Hong Kong in 2012

Task 6: Answer the following questions:4

a) Find out what the term ‘putrescibles’ stands for

b) If in 2012, total MSW was 9278 tonnes per day, how many tonnes did putrescibles account for?

c) How many items in the pie chart can you identify that can be recycled in Hong Kong?

d) Which of the items you identified in part (c) are in your opinion most easily recyclable?

Disposal of Food waste in Hong Kong If you look at the graphic below (Figure 3), domestic food waste in red illustrates the food waste that

households dispose of each year – in 2011 this is approximately 3,600 tonnes of food waste every day. On

the other hand, Commercial and Industrial sources (C&I food waste) accounted for 1,100 tonnes.

Task 7: Answer the following questions:

a) In 2011, if households and commercial & industrial sources produced 4700 tonnes per day of food

waste, what percentage did households account for?

b) Taking the average daily disposal quantity of food waste in Hong Kong (yellow + blue + red

columns) between 2003 and 2012, has there been any significant change in this quantity (tonnes)

during this period?

c) Observe the trend in the line ‘food waste per capita’ (kg/person/day) what was the best and worst

year for the amount of food waste per capita?

d) Which of the columns (yellow, red and blue) is larger in 2012 in comparison to 2003? How do you

think this could have happened?

How does Hong Kong compare to our friends in Taipei and Seoul?5

Task 8: Answer the following questions:

a) Look at the graphic above (Figure 4) regarding food waste, how does Hong Kong compare to Seoul and Taipei City?

b) How come, Seoul and Taipei City have the same tonne per capita (0.07) of food waste, yet Seoul has much more absolute tonnes of food waste (767000 tonnes compared to 182,000 tonnes)?

c) What reasons could explain why Hong Kong creates far less food waste than these two other Asian cities?

Take a look at this video; it may be able to help you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWITc7AlWN8

Strategies to improve the situation of food waste in Hong Kong

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‘Preventing and reducing food waste saves resources and cut environmental impacts. According to UNEP, roughly a third of the food produced in the world for human consumption is wasted or lost every year, amount to 1.3 billion tonnes annually. This amounts to a major squandering of resources, including land, water, energy, labour and capital that had gone into producing the food, and needlessly produced GHG, expediting climate change’

Source: UNEP, “Food Waste Facts”, http://www.unep.org/wed/quickfacts/.

Task 9: Video timea) Watch the following clips – Hong Kong choking on Food waste - https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=WC_Uw5HbRcgFood waste problem in Hong Kong - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idJ-v0I8Gdo

b) Using the graphic below on the Food waste management hierarchy (Figure 5), please identify where the strategies spoken about in the two videos would appear in the food waste management hierarchy

c) The graphic below is called an ‘reverse hierarchy’ or ‘inverted pyramid’, what do you think these terms mean?

Food Banks

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What is a food bank?

A food bank is a charitable organization that collects, sorts, stores and distributes donated food within a community. Traditionally, a food bank does not distribute food directly to those in need. Instead, it serves a network of local charities, whom in turn feed the hungry. The world’s first food bank was the St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance, which was established in 1967 in Arizona, U.S.A.

Food banking is about ensuring good food does not go to waste but is instead safely and efficiently redistributed to those in need. So, instead of buying food, a food bank will work closely with the local food industry to “rescue” excess food and ensure it is not unnecessarily sent to landfill. Like any for-profit food organization, food banks take great care to ensure they only distribute food of the highest standard.

Most charities do not have the transportation, space or manpower to collect, sort and store a pallet or truckload of donated food but a food bank is specifically set up to do just this. It is able to “bank” large quantities of excess food in a centralized warehouse, and with help from volunteers, sort, pack and re-distribute it through a network of partner charities.

With thousands of food banks on every continent, there are many different models but these are some of the key elements shared by food banks around the world.

Task 10 Food Banks around the World – identify whether the food bank operates in a country above or below the equator line

Food Bank Country

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Stories from other schools

‘A good example is Ma On Shan Ling Liang Primary School, which involves daily volunteer parent helpers. About 720 participating students join the programme, while 170 students bring their own packed lunch. The school has also set up a small on-site composter to convert food waste into fertilizer, which is used for their own school organic farming. The programme results in substantial reduction in disposable lunch boxes and utensils, with 90% waste reduction from lunch. After the implementation of the scheme, the school generates about 4.5 – 6 kg of food waste per day, or about 0.006 – 0.008 kg per student.

Sing Yin Secondary School set up its own environmental policy and introduced knowledge and skills for practising a wide range of measures by students and staff. As regards food waste reduction, the school has set up food waste recycling facility and other green initiatives, such as working with the school’s food kiosk operator to avoid and reduce food waste. In the past, the operator would prepare extra lunch boxes every day to meet contingent needs but that often resulted in a surplus that endedup having to be dumped. The new practice offers soup noodles and other snacks to meet extra demands as they arose, thus avoiding food waste.’

Source: http://www.enb.gov.hk/en/files/FoodWastePolicyEng.pdf

Can technology save the day?

Task 11: Watch the following video clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d1npE1pLrU- and identify the ways in which this particular technology could help reduce food waste

Turning food waste into energy

Task 12: Watch the following video clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z71_penjFkI - and write a paragraph about how the authorities in California are able to convert food waste into renewable energy

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Hong Kong Government Initiative

The graphic below illustrates the Hong Kong Government’s plans to reduce food waste by 40% by the year 2022

Task 13: Can you think of any ways in which we as a community of people in VSA can help the Hong Kong government achieve this objective?

Task 14: Write a one-paragraph reflection of what you have learned in this unit

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