China’s Food-Waste Campaign Is Really About Garbage

Until recently, visitors to the Chuiyan Fried Beef restaurant in Changsha, China, were handed a menu and invited to weigh themselves on a scale. Weight-appropriate food recommendations followed. Male and over 175 pounds? Braised pork belly for you. Female and under 88 pounds? How about a fish head and fried beef? The point, according to the restaurant, was to encourage customers to order smaller portions in conformity with President Xi Jinping's new campaign against food waste.

It’s safe to say this wasn’t what Xi had in mind — the restaurant has since apologized — but his effort is nonetheless serious. Earlier this month, Xi declared food waste “shameful,” “shocking” and “distressing” in a speech reminding Chinese they shouldn’t take the country’s food security for granted during a global pandemic. But that’s not the only reason Xi is launching his second food-waste campaign in seven years. More so than any of his predecessors, he has also sought solutions to China's emergence as the world's biggest generator of garbage.

For most of China's contemporary history, generating jobs — not trash — was the issue that consumed leaders. Barring a few signature projects, waste management was typically informal and ad hoc. Landfills would emerge on the edge of a city or town, and then often be overtaken by development before they could be filled. By the 1990s, with land in increasingly high demand, policy makers had started building incinerators to address the problem. But these soon led to serious civil unrest, especially among middle-class homeowners.

China’s biggest cities have responded by investing in (comparatively) safer and more sophisticated incinerators and landfills in recent years. They’ve also turned to waste-diversion programs, especially recycling, to manage the trash load. In 2019, with Xi’s backing, Shanghai launched China's first program requiring residents to sort recyclables from trash.

But admirable as such efforts are, they won’t fix the problem. To do that, the government will have to address food waste, which — depending on the region — accounts for between 50% and 70% China’s overall trash burden. Even using conservative estimates, this adds up to about 15 million tons of wasted food annually, enough to feed tens of millions of people. Much of that is due to spoilage in fields, trucks and warehouses. But about 60% is simply wasted by consumers, at home or eating out.

Changing that won’t be easy. Among other issues, Chinese culture places a premium on respecting guests by providing more dishes than can be consumed at a banquet (and there are many banquets), or risk being perceived as cheap. Similarly, many diners are embarrassed to ask for take-away boxes when eating out, fearing it suggests an inability to afford food at home.

China's leaders have been inveighing against such profligacy for centuries, with little success. Xi’s own contribution, known as the Clean Your Plate Campaign, hasn’t fared much better since it began in 2013. Xi is now renewing the program with a marketing campaign that uses every lever of state and social media, including censorship of gluttonous food porn.

Will it work? More likely than not, stagnant wages and food inflation — not propaganda — will be more effective at convincing Chinese consumers to reduce waste, at least in the short term. But seriously addressing the problem will eventually require more than haranguing citizens about clean plates. Instead, the government needs to start at the source by helping its hundreds of millions of small farmers find efficient transportation networks and storage facilities, and ensure that food makes it safely to market without spoiling. It should also work with retailers to shift marketing norms away from “buy one, get one”-type promotions that lead to waste, and instead encourage labeling that educates consumers on storage options.

Efforts like these don’t have quite the ring of Xi’s marketing campaign. Collectively, though, they might help ensure that future generations have full plates — but not overflowing landfills.