The Foolish Old Man Moves Buns - How Much Food Do We Throw Away Every Month?

I left Central with a ten-grain loaf of bread in my arms and took the bus home. The aroma of the fermented, baked bread drifted through the nostrils of me and the passenger beside me. How many people know that this mouthwatering scent belongs to a lucky survivor that had just escaped from a garbage station? This was the first food I ever obtained from scavenging.

At 10:30 at night, traveling light, I set out for the mall that is usually dazzling with lights and lined with international luxury brand stores. From the elevator by the mall's side door that leads to the parking lot, we arrived at the underground parking garage, turned two or three corners, and rows upon rows of large green trash bins were already before our eyes. Not far away, two men were chatting and laughing while rummaging through things, and security guards, along with what looked like kitchen workers, cleaners and movers, occasionally walked past. I had thought the destination would be a more hidden, dim little corner, but unexpectedly it was bustling with people coming and going, and yet no one interfered.

We stood nearby and waited a while, and once everyone else had left, the group walked into the garbage station, lifted the lids of the trash carts and began feeling and squeezing. A few of the more experienced people said to me, "There won't be any food in those nice-looking black plastic bags." Only in this scene did I discover that the black plastic bags in a garbage station actually come in different kinds, differing in thickness, glossiness and depth of color. After searching for about five minutes, we pulled out a whole bag of fragrant bread. It looked basically no different from when it was freshly baked; only an hour apart, they had gone from premium items selling for more than HKD 30 on the shelves to waste piled in a garbage bag.

We carried away two bags of food, enough for ten homeless people the next day. Just how much food does a supermarket throw away every day, every week, every month?

We live in an affluent society, where restaurants and supermarkets are piled high with food. Spoiled, our city and its people have completely forgotten the resources needed to produce food, and the hard work put in by farmers, fishermen and herders, wasting the gifts of nature. On the other side of the globe, however, some people have to go to bed hungry. The phrase "hungry population" should really not exist; our blue planet has abundant resources, and if they could be fully utilized and waste reduced, the food supply should be eased!

A perfect ending may still be far from us, but this night I did my modest part to try to redistribute resources. The scent of the bread in my hands taught me a lesson, making me think carefully about our relationship with food.