Individuals Join Campaign Against Mooncake Waste

Ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a green group said the people of Hong Kong are for the first time signing up to a charter in their personal capacity to help reduce the waste of mooncakes.

Food Grace said a charter targeting businesses came into effect five years ago. This year, the group is introducing a personal charter.

"The idea is that waste does not only exist between gift exchange from corporate but also from gift exchange from friends, family, from the market itself," project officer Casey Ng said.

"So, we want more and more people to think that food – if they don't eat it – would end up as waste."

Ng said 200 individuals have signed the personal charter so far.

Many of them said they would ask their friends and family first before they send them the mid-autumn delicacy.

"If that person doesn't like that mooncake, it will be a waste," he said.

Ng also appealed to the public to send mooncakes to food-collection organisations before the Mid-Autumn Festival next month, for them to be given out to people as gifts.

Food Grace says some 2.9 million mooncakes were wasted last year, up from 2.27 million in 2017.

The group said the increase was due mainly to over-production of one type of mooncake that was new to the market.