Food waste in China is a serious issue in recent years, and has continued to grow. Food waste is a significantly fraction of municipal solid waste, reducing it may improve food safety, cost and nutrition, and it contributes environment-friendly and human health. Food waste is potential resource that can be converted to energy through specific treatment. The aim of this report is to conduct questionnaire and interview about food waste in China to find out the feasible solutions to minimize food waste, especially kitchen waste.

 

As the survey and interview results shown, customers food waste is the main portion of food waste in restaurant, due to that customers would like to treat people generously due to traditional Chinese culture. We also found out that people waste a lot when having business meals with clients. Moreover, the mostly preferred food waste solutions to increase the awareness of food waste, offering packaging service and incentive for no waste.

 

Combining previous solutions of food reduction and results from our research, we recommended these possible solutions: 1) increase the awareness of food waste, 2) customers order properly, 3) encourage customers pack up their leftover, 4) restaurants provide food packing service, 5) reward customers for non-food waste, 6) more plate and food sizes for customers, 7) separate food waste. Furthermore, we recommended two optional technical processes to be used in future to convert food waste into biogas, i.e., the two-phase anaerobic digestion and ethanol fermentation process.