Hong Kong’s landfills are predicted to be full by 2020, even with the new incinerator in plan, it can only burn around 30% of the total waste output. To tackle this imminent problem, the Government released a ‘Food Waste and Yard Waste Plan for Hong Kong’ (2014),  targeted “to reduce the Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) disposal rate to landfill by 40% on a per capita basis by 2022”. Amongst the overall food waste, supermarkets contribute to a small proportion, and 2.25% of the total putrescible waste. Though the statistics may not sound significant, supermarkets are actually closely linked to the daily lives of everyone and hence cause a huge impact.

Methodology and Findings

1. Overseas research

• Research on supermarket food waste reduction practices in 5 countries, via websites, email enquiry, case studies, and research studies.

• We gathered over 40 practices from 20 different supermarket brands. Food reduction practices were found in different stages of operations. According to the findings, we have defined a value chain with 4 main stages, namely sourcing, stocking, sales and after-sales.

2. Local research - Desktop research

• Desktop research was carried out to understand operations of Hong Kong supermarkets and their current practices on food waste reduction. We targeted several major Hong Kong supermarket chains.

• Apart from surplus food donation and composting, which are considered as end-of-pipe approach, Hong Kong supermarkets rarely, if ever, adopt more proactive measures that would tackle the food waste problem at source. Therefore, it further provides us a motivation to recommend more variety of food waste reduction practices that focuses at different parts of the value chain.

3. Local research - On-site observations

• As limited information could be obtained from the Internet, we still lack relevant information on Hong Kong supermarkets’ current operations and practices that would allow us to make sound recommendations on food waste reduction strategies to local supermarkets. Hence, observations were conducted at 19 local supermarket stores to understand their daily operations. In order to facilitate the observation process and to ensure consistency of the observations, a standard set of practices we need to look out for and take record of were devised and followed during the observations.

• Several opportunities to reduce food waste at supermarket were identified during our visits. Areas for improvements are perishable goods in open refrigerators, discount on perishables, expiry dates readability and discount zones.

4. Development of food waste reduction strategies

• From the 40 practices we have gathered from our overseas research, we first screened out practices that have already been implemented in local supermarkets.

• We then selected 11 food waste reduction strategies (out of the list of practices) that are both proactive in nature and applicable to local supermarkets.

• Besides, we proposed 4 additional food waste reduction strategies that are not found in overseas supermarkets, but we believed to be effective in reducing food waste in local supermarkets. When devising the list of food waste reduction strategies, we also made sure that there is at least 1 practice at each stage of the value chain. Hence, a total of 15 food waste reduction strategies were developed at this stage.

5. Consumer survey

• A consumer survey was developed to understand consumers’ views on local supermarkets food waste reduction practices and to find out whether consumers support new recommended food waste reduction strategies.

• 836 people were surveyed on the streets across all 18 districts in Hong Kong. We have found that the majority think local supermarkets are not putting enough effort in food waste reduction and would like them to follow overseas examples to step up their efforts. We have also identified a few opportunities in devising strategies to reduce food waste on different fronts when it involves customers, which should be focused on establishing better discount zones and policies, and educating younger customers on food storage.

Final Proposal

Summarizing the findings and results from our overseas research, local research and consumer survey, we have devised 15 food waste reduction strategies to local supermarkets.