Research Topic: Food Waste in Hong Kong

Introduction - Food Waste in Hong Kong

Do you know how many tonnes of food waste is produced every day in Hong Kong? Give you few seconds to guess........ According to Feeding Hong Kong, the answer is over 32,000 tonnes! 

But do you know how many children die of hunger every minute? Again, give you few seconds to think........ According to the United Nations World Food Programme(WFP), the answer is 10.

32,000 tonnes Vs 10 children in a minute! What's a scaring and ironic figure!

Maybe it is time for us to take a closer look on the problem of Food Waste in Hong Kong and this is also the aim of the project you are going to conduct. Before conducting a study project, let's give you some more background information about Food Waste.

Youtube Channel

A. Hunger and Food Waste Issues in Hong Kong  by CISFeedingHongKong

B. Food waste in Hong Kong (cut)

C. Hong Kong choking on food waste 香港的廚餘危機 by South China Morning Post

Online Encyclopedia

Wikipedias - Food Waste can get you the definition of Food Waste

Images

The problem of waste is highlighted in this Friends of the Earth display of discarded supermarket

The picture illustrates the prediction of Hong Kong made by Feeding Hong Kong if we don't treat the problem of food waste seriously.

Food Waste Management Strategy suggested by Food Wise Hong Kong.

News and articles

A. The Food Chain ( Hong Kong Magazine, Apr 2012)

With Hong Kong’s food waste levels continuing to grow, enterprising individuals are helping to curb the amount of food that’s being sent to the landfill. Hong Kong Magazine takes a close look on a matter of Food Waste through the Food Chain.

B. Food Justice ( Oxfam Hong Kong)

This article gives you a picture of the problems of food system in Hong Kong. Food waste is 

one of them. 

Information Topic

Information For the Inquiry Project

Government Documents

A. Hong Kong : Blueprint for Sustainable Use of Resources 2013-2022 can give you some ideas about the target on the reduction of food waste given by the Environment Bureau in 2013.

B. A Food Waste & Yard Waste Plan for Hong Kong 2014-2022 is the most update document related to Food Waste Policy in Hong Kong. It provides a full report on reviewing the problem of food waste in HK supported with statistics and giving a whole picture on the plan of food waste reduction.

Figures & Statistics
Monitoring of Solid Waste in Hong Kong 2011 stated that there were 9,000 tonnes municipal solid waste per day and for almost 40% of the total was food waste.

News and Commentary Recommendations

A. Hong Kong's “Zero Food Waste is written by Green Power. It not only gives the picture about the plan of food waste reduction in Hong Kong, but also states some successful case in the country.

B. Tackle food waste today to create a sustainable future (SCMP, Dec 2014)

C. Waste not, want not ( Time out, Jan 2015 )

D. Group offers to buy Hong Kong's waste and use it as a resource (SCMP, Nov 2014)

E. Legco Finance Committee approves HK$1.6b food-waste plant (SCMP, Oct 2014)

F. Does a child die of hunger every 10 seconds? (BBC, June 2013)

Book Recommendations

A. Food Waste by Chancellor, Deborah

Physical Description	32 p. : col. ill. ; 28 cm.
Publication	London : Wayland, 2009

B. 剩食 陳曉蕾[著].

Physical Description	205 頁 : 插圖 (部份彩色) ; 23 公分.
Publication	香港 : 三聯, 2011.

C. Waste: Uncovering the global food Scandal by Tristram Stuart

Physical Description	xxii, 451 p., [16] p. of plates : col. ill. ; 20 cm.
Publication	London : Penguin Books, 2009

Multimedia resources

Theme Song for the Activity of Food Wise Hong Kong

The websites for the organizations / government department advocating Food Wise

A. Food Wise Hong Kong, which is managed by HK government. It is aimed to promote the concept of Food Wise to all walks of life.

B. Feeding Hong Kong, which is an accredited member of The Global Food Banking Network, an international non-profit organisation dedicated to creating and strengthening food banks and national food bank networks. Their task is to fight hunger in Hong Kong and at the same time reduce the amount of quality food that is being sent to our city’s landfills.

C. Food Angel, which is a food rescue and food assistance program launched in 2011 by Bo Charity Foundation with the mission of "WASTE NOT, HUNGER NOT." The program rescues edible surplus food from different sectors of the food industry that would otherwise be disposed of as waste.

D. Enough Food for Everyone, which is an international organization. She keeps on holding activities to remind the public the importance of food saving.

Research Skills

A. The Big6 Research Model 

Big6 is a good model for conducting a research project. Students, you can read these two videos to learn about the main idea of each steps in Big6.

   

   **The Big6 Research Model for Middle School Students

          **The  Model for the Process of Informational Research

B. Something about Plagiarism and Citation

Plagiarism is equal to stealing. We need to bear in mind not to fall in this trap. The following videos give you some ideas about the definition of plagiarism and the skills of avoid it.

** understand Plagiarism

  **Plagiarism, Paraphrasing, and the APA Style

Research Skills Big6 - Step 1. Task definition

It is important that you understand what your challenge is going to be about... There are a lot of questions to ask.

Your teachers will guide you through projects by giving you starting questions, prompting new discussions with ideas and methods, or acting as a supervisor in other ways.

Guided Inquiry process:

What makes a good project? A good project is an analytical report with detailed structures and varieties of good quality information.

To produce a good project with reliable support, you are going to follow the following steps using BIG 6 framework.

Guideline to students  

Step 1: Task definition

The purpose of this step is to define the information problem and identify the information problem.

Questions

A. What am I expected to do?
You are required to conduct an individual enquiry study about the problem of food waste in Hong Kong.

1. What is food waste?
2. What problems does food waste create in Hong Kong?
3. About 3,000 tonnes of food waste is disposed to landfills every day, how does it affect your life and Hong Kong in long term?
4. As landfills become inadequate, how important does domestic food waste management play an important role in reducing municipal solid waste in Hong Kong?
5. What strategy do you want to adopt to help relieve the problem?

B. Do I understand what I need to do?
In doing your individual enquiry study, you will need to narrow down your research area and set a clear area of interest, e.g. the food waste management in Hong Kong, or the ways for  reduction in the daily per capita waste disposal in Hong Kong. To help yourself in understanding your area of interest, you will need to gather first-hand and second-hand information from different sources. After interpreting your data, you will also need to draw conclusions and report your findings.

By narrowing down the topic, you need to know more about the topic. In doing so, you can gather information from the reliable party (the government) and other organizations studying this topic.

1. Search the Environmental Protection Department for ideas of how is food waste problem handled in Hong Kong. http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/a/waste/prob_solutions/WFdev_OWTF.html

2. Search other organizations like Food Wise Hong Kong which study the problem of food waste in Hong Kong. http://www.foodwisehk.gov.hk/en/

3. Search some media which provices visual support to your topic, e.g. News Magazine (新聞透視) from TVB.

C. What are the questions I need to answer?

You need to raise questions about the food waste situation in Hong Kong that you find interesting and would like to explore. Use online resources to help brainstorm your projects. For example, Popplet (an online brainstorming tool for you to gather your ideas at the beginning stage). 

D. How is it relevant in my life?

You need to explain why you choose a particular area of interest and explain how it interests you and relates to your life. You can add in some of your own actual scenarios to tell the experiences of how food waste affect life.

For example, is food waste management adopted in the place you lived?

E. What type of information do I need?

For first-hand information, you may conduct online or face to face interviews or arrange focus groups.

• You can interview your neigbours about the food waste problems in your living place.
• You can interview your classmates about the food waste managements in your school.

For secondary information, you look into news articles, books, e-books, journals, and reports from the government and reliable organizations, video from YouTube etc. The secondary information types can be categorized as Figures & Statistics, News Recommendations, Online Feature Articles and Commentary, Book Recommendations and Multimedia resources.

• News articles

• Search keywords e.g. food waste problem, food waste management in HK on the web so that you can find news suitable to your project.

1. South China Morning Post- Tackle food waste today to create a sustainable future ( http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong)

2. YouTube video:

1. Hunger and Food Waste Issues in Hong Kong  by CISFeedingHongKong

2. Food waste in Hong Kong (cut)

3. Hong Kong choking on food waste 香港的廚餘危機 by South China Morning Post

You need to gather both first-hand and second-hand information and organize the data you gather.

F. How am I going to conduct the survey?
You may consider completing questionnaires through face to face interviews or you may do it online using different websites.

1. http://www.my3q.com/
2. http://freeonlinesurveys.com/#/

G. What do I need to do to present my findings?

You may consider including tables and charts, showing your findings in your survey, or even comparing the data against the data in other countries.

1. http://piktochart.com

To make a sucessful project, you need to support your findings with data and statistics. You can go to the above website to create your own charts and tables so as to support your findings. This can help create a tailor-made charts and data so that you can visualize your findings to your readers.

  2. http://www.powtoon.com/

Besides powerpoint and chart, Video is another alternative for you to present your project. The above website can help you to do this without any costing.