Food waste has become a big problem in China.
Zhou Jinsong, a canteen(食堂) manager at Central South University, said that students produce over 12 barrels(桶) of leftovers every day — each barrel stands at one meter in height. Zhou’s canteen is just one of several on the campus.
According to Xinhua News Agency, the food wasted by Chinese people equates to about 50 million tons of grain every year, or 10 percent of the country’s total annual grain production. This food could feed another 200 million people. What students waste every year could feed over 10 million people. Students nowadays are well protected by their families and hardly know how hard farmers work to provide them with the food they eat.
“Since the 1980s, when Chinese gradually became richer, food waste has been a subject of debate. But things have hardly changed over the years,” said Yu Changjiang, a sociologist at Peking University. “It’s the Chinese way of showing respect to friends, often referred as Mianzi.”
But rather than tradition, huge public spending on government banquets(宴会) is also causing food waste, said Zhou Xiaozheng from the sociology department at Renmin University of China. “It’s the result of widespread reception meals at government levels. It is also important that everyone thinks about how they can do their best to reduce food waste.”
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