CUHK
News Centre

To raise public awareness of food waste, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has run the ‘Love Food Hate Waste @ CUHK’ campaign since 2013. As a highlight event of the campaign, CUHK hosted the Leftover Meal today (28 January) to summarize the impact of this programme over the past two years. Mr. K.S. Wong, Secretary for the Environment, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, and Prof. Joseph Sung, Vice-Chancellor and President of CUHK, were the officiating guests. They performed a cooking demonstration with food trimmings, showing how full utilization of food resources could be managed, and along with other participants, enjoyed a meal made from leftover ingredients.

Professor Sung remarked, ‘When the “Love Food Hate Waste @ CUHK” was first launched in September 2013, our target was to reduce campus food waste by 20% in two years. We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the generous support from our Colleges, caterers, catering committees, staff and students. We are glad to have achieved nearly 20% reduction in food waste disposal in the past year compared to the previous year. According to a survey on diners’ leftovers on campus between January 2014 and October 2015, a 13% increase in diners with zero leftovers was observed, indicating awareness of reducing food waste has been raised.’

Moreover, with the support of Greeners Action, CUHK has organized a variety of activities to promote the idea of reducing food waste, including ‘Experience Week on Food Waste Segregation’, ‘Save Food Ambassador Training’, and ‘Clean the Plate; Get a Prize’. A total of 14 canteens on campus have actively participated in food waste collection and food waste reduction education, serving as leaders and models for the catering industry, and contributing enormously to our success. CUHK has also published a ‘Love Food Hate Waste @ CUHK’ booklet to share its experience in reducing food waste on campus, and to call for active participation from the community to alleviate the waste problem.

The campaign has been sponsored by the Environment and Conservation Fund for two years. Though the funding will expire soon, CUHK will continue the ‘Love Food Hate Waste @ CUHK’ campaign to promote awareness of treasuring food and reducing food waste at source. Along with that, CUHK will enhance the food waste recycling service for canteens, transforming more food waste into compost for campus greening and farming. In such way, the University hopes to further reduce campus food waste and move towards ending it completely.