It is dusk at Hong Kong’s Tai Wo wet market and the stallholders are shutting up shop, separating browning bean sprouts and bruised oranges from the fruit and vegetables fresh enough to be sold the next day.
Unlike the waste from most of the city’s fresh produce markets, which is dumped in one of three fast-filling landfills, the leftovers from this one are collected by a local food-recycling scheme.
Run by the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, it uses the discarded vegetables to cook meals for the unemployed. The rest is sent to local farms to be composted.
“We usually collect around 180kg, and around 70% is edible,” says Christina Jang, who works for the project in Tai Wo, near Hong Kong’s border with China.
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