Expired food
Food that’s still edible or just past date. Best route: give it to people to eat.
Food waste 101
Food waste
101
What is food waste? Simply what’s left in the kitchen. It’s not something to fear — it’s food that hasn’t found its next home. Here’s what we share most often in our workshops.
01
Three kinds
Pre-consumer scraps
What’s left before cooking: peel, trimmings, eggshells, grounds. Always there and easiest to reuse — our main focus.
Plate waste
Leftovers from meals. Best route: cook the right amount and finish it — reduce before recycling.
02
Hong Kong in numbers
3,001tonnes of food waste thrown away in Hong Kong every day (2024)
8.7%recycling rate — fewer than 1 in 10 finds a way out
0.4kgper person per day — about one lunchbox
60×household recycling: from 2 to over 120 tonnes a day
Source: EPD, Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong — Waste Statistics for 2024 (published Dec 2025). The daily total weighs about as much as 250 double-decker buses (at about 12 tonnes each).
03
Where does it go?
Most of it: landfill
From your bin to the building’s refuse room, then to landfill — today mainly Tuen Mun and Ta Kwu Ling. Tseung Kwan O has taken only construction waste since 2016.
O·PARK organic resources centres
O·PARK1 at Siu Ho Wan on Lantau and O·PARK2 at Sha Ling in the North District (opened 2024) use anaerobic digestion to turn food waste into biogas for electricity, plus compost.
Smart food waste bins
Found in public estates and many private estates, and they record how much is collected.
No waste charge — so it’s up to us
The waste charging scheme was shelved in 2025. With no fine, sorting and recycling depend on us choosing to do it.
04
Ranking food waste
1
Best: pre-consumer scraps
Peel, eggshells, coffee grounds, trimmings. Nutrient-rich and ideal for compost — and the hardest to avoid.
2
Next: low-oil, low-salt leftovers
Soup solids and herbal tea leftovers. Eat them where you can, or use them in the next meal.
3
Last: oily, salty leftovers
Chips, pasta and the like don’t suit compost — but they’re the easiest to avoid: finish it, buy less, ask for less rice.
05
What can be collected?
✅ Yes
- Fruit peel
- Veg trimmings
- Eggshells (rinse raw egg off)
- Coffee grounds*
- Herbal tea leftovers*
- Soup leftovers (solids)
- Expired food without additives
❌ No
- Meat (raw or cooked)
- Oily or salty food
*Even better dried first — in the sun or the oven.
06
Bokashi at home
- 01Add scrapsVeg, eggshells, peel, coffee grounds, tea leaves.
- 02Sprinkle and sealA thin layer each time — no smell.
- 03Seal for three weeksIt becomes early-stage compost.
- 04Mix with soil, wait a weekAdd an equal amount of soil and it matures into compost you can grow in.
Leave out: meat and bones, seafood shells, hard peel and big stones (like durian husks or avocado pits).
07
Fruit-peel enzyme
1 sugar : 3 peel : 10 water. Leave 30% space in the bottle and ferment for 3 months. Use it for dishes, floors and washing veg.
| Bottle | Sugar | Peel | Water |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 ml | 25 g | 75 g | 250 ml |
| 700 ml | 40 g | 120 g | 400 ml |
| 1000 ml | 50 g | 150 g | 500 ml |
08
A bit deeper
Every stage of the food system makes some
Production, processing, retail and consumers, linked by transport — bruised, odd-shaped or off-spec food drops out at every step. Globally most is lost early on; in Hong Kong the biggest share is at the consumer end, especially plate waste.
Why we focus on pre-consumer scraps
Plate waste can reach zero — just finish your food. Pre-consumer scraps can’t be avoided; nobody eats eggshells. Groups like Green Price, Foodlink and Food Angel already rescue edible food, so we chose pre-consumer.
Why oil and salt don’t suit compost
Oil and water don’t mix, so oil seals soil off from water; salt makes soil salty and dry. Soup solids have a little of both, but far less.
How composting works
Microbes and small creatures — the decomposers at the bottom of the food chain — break things down into nutrients that go back to the soil and feed the next crop.
Black soldier flies aren’t house flies
Adult black soldier flies only breed and drink — they don’t eat, so they don’t spread germs. One gram of eggs becomes over a kilo of larvae, which eat food waste and can become animal feed.
Binning is too easy in Hong Kong
So easy that recycling feels inconvenient by comparison. Add the idea that leftovers mean good fortune, and over-ordering becomes normal.
09
Common myths
“Food waste is just rubbish”
It’s what’s left in the kitchen — it just hasn’t found its next home.
“If it goes in the building bin, it’s recycled”
Most of it isn’t — it goes straight to landfill.
“Food waste always smells”
Smell comes from handling: too much water makes it ferment without air. Keep wet and dry apart, freeze it, or seal it with Bokashi.
“If it’s recycled, I don’t need to cut down”
For plate waste, reducing is best; recycling is the fallback.
10
Things you can do tonight
1
Cook the right amount
Even asking for less rice counts.
2
Dry your eggshells
Rinse, dry and crush them — instant plant food.
3
Keep wet and dry apart
Keep peel and trimmings in a tub in the freezer — no smell.
Want to learn more?
Join a workshop or a researcher day and try it yourself.