Mid-Autumn Festival is the perfect occasion to celebrate the fruitful harvest with friends and family, yet we believe it is not the excuse for over-indulgence. Learning from experience, we had scaled down and kicked start the mooncake recovery campaign earlier this year. Meanwhile, through sharing some green tips on our online platform, we hope to inspire people to enjoy the festival in an eco-friendly way.
More than 550 pieces of moon-cake had been recovered this year from our Centre and CA office collection point. 60% were donated directly from manufacturing brands and 40% were from general public. Over 80% of the mooncakes were collected prior to the festival, showing that the awareness of food responsibility has started to cultivate in our society.
This year, the trendy mooncakes had created an unbalanced market which in turn encouraged manufacturers to over-produce. Manufacturers should never take charities as a fall back for surplus, over-production is evidently the source of food waste. In the meantime, the issues of gift-giving culture and mismatch of desires and needs still exist. Therefore, to reduce food waste, we should be a smart and eco-conscious consumer, plan ahead and think twice before each purchase during future festive celebrations!
Reduce single-use plastic
Reducing food waste is the major focus of FRRC, yet we strive to be as eco-conscious as possible in our daily routine. For instance, we do not provide plastic bags and encourage food receivers to bring their own bag or reusable containers during food distribution. Although some do follow our suggestion, we found that there are still a number of food receivers using brand new plastic bags.
Recently, we have received few boxes of peanuts and would like to take this opportunity to practice using less single-use plastic. We reminded food receivers ahead in phone calls and most of them did bring their containers. It shows that it only requires a warm reminder and a little time to develop as a habit. We hope to encourage using less plastic through different programs in the future and would adopt greener alternatives while purchasing necessities.
