Macau is blessed with delicious local food and absolutely no shortage of great restaurants, from traditional Cha Chaan Tengs to fine dining establishments. But unfortunately, we also generate a lot of food waste – around 40 percent of the total waste in the city. Last year the Environmental Protection Bureau (DSPA) begun a project to recycle food waste from households and collected over 240 tonnes of food waste in just the first six months. Also established just last year, the Society of Food & Environmental Health Macao (SFEH) hopes to try to improve this situation too.
“The vision of SFEH is to redevelop a positive relationship between humans and nature, build ecological civilization literacy, communicate ‘good’ food knowledge and promote traditional Chinese culture by using food as a connecting point, and advocate the concept of sustainable development,” says the Chairperson of the organization Ms. Ruby O. “In Macau, food waste is the highest solid waste, so we hope to address this with multiple solutions and through empowering consumers and professionals in food sectors and demonstrating that environmental protection itself can contribute to economic growth.”
The group has around 30 members, all with professional backgrounds in food safety, waste management, education and sustainability, and regularly runs training sessions and workshops to empower people to have a more green lifestyle and reduce their carbon footprint.
In April this year they inaugurated their Food Literacy Education Base in the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, together with partner Da Hengqin Public Facility Management Company. The objective is to utilize the existing green facilities and natural-based solutions waste practices to run sustainability related activities, raise ecological conservation awareness and promote ideas on using a circular economy to resolve waste issues.
“We want to show people that recycling can be also fun and convenient,” says Ruby, who studied Food Science at UBC in Vancouver, Canada, and lived there for 10 years before returning and contributing to food safety management in the hospitality industry in Macau.
Ruby stresses that addressing food waste is not just about more carefully disposing of waste. There are many interesting ways that natural based recycling projects can become part of the industrial value chain.
“People usually think there’s not much we can do with food waste, just burn it or maybe compost it, but we want to show people that organic matter is not really waste, it’s actually a resource that we can be turned into something else,” she notes.
One example of this is a project the group has, whereby they use Black Soldier fly maggots to consume food waste from domestic residences.
“The maggots eat the food waste which reduces the waste significantly, and then they become feed for the fish in an aquaponic system,” explains Ruby. “Or they can be deep frozen and ground into a powder that can be used as a natural fertilizer. The maggots can even be further extracted into biomaterials because of their very unique structure and chemical composition.”
To educate people on the value of food and what goes into food production, SFEH also runs farming workshops at their new Hengqin centre. And they have been a little surprised by the positive responses.
“At first we were worried people would think it was too dirty or too sweaty, but actually in the end, people wanted more, so we are planning longer sessions. When people say ‘this is really hard work’ then we know it’s working because we want them to know this is not easy. It takes a long time to grow food and you need to do some physical work, not to mention the impact of frequent extreme weather which can make farming even more challenging.”
The group have a range of other interesting activities and projects to encourage people to value food and be more responsible about wasting it, including workshops on how to upcycle leftover food to jams and pickles.
“We even make fresh pet food using vegetable trimmings from wholesale markets because pets and animals have to be healthy too. We turn the trimmings into snacks and jerky and donate them to different associations.”
Another fun and interactive way to teach people about sustainability is through games, and SFEH is the first NGO to bring the ‘2030s SDGs Game’ to Macau. A multiplayer, in-person, card-based game designed in Japan, participants need to meet their Sustainable Development Goals by running projects and seeing what kind of impact they have on the world, to ultimately figure out how we can all best live on a balanced and thriving planet.
“There are social, economic and environmental goals and impacts, so the game gives people a very direct sense within two to three hours of what actions they took, what kind of world they created together, and what changes they need to make,” says Ruby.
Ultimately, Ruby hopes the group’s activities can really make people aware of how they can live more sustainably, and also see that in doing so, they can create not just a better environment, but also a better society and a healthier planet in which we can all be prosperous.
“There are a lot of opportunities in Macau for how we treat our food waste and how we upcycle things and turn them into new industries or solution-based products and services. We can create new industries that solve waste and create jobs, and enable new technologies and talent. This can address environmental issues, as well as economic and social ones,” she says.
“Start small on a community residential level, and if it works, leverage that success and upscale and expand. Macau can be a pilot city for low carbon, green practices, a benchmark for other cities and countries, and can contribute to the world class city clusters of the Greater Bay Area too.”
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