Ugly, But Delicious – Food Waste as a Global Dilemma

It’s not an exaggeration that food waste is one of the biggest problems facing mankind today. 30-50% of all food produced globally is never eaten, with a value loss worth $1 trillion. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after the US and China.

From an environmental point of view, food waste is simply catastrophic. Precious land is used for growing food, and for discarding in landfills. And what makes it worse? That over 800 million people go to bed hungry every night. With the globalization of the food system, and the luxury of eating ‘anything anywhere anytime’, unfortunately, food waste occurs in every part of the value chain, including growers, food processors, restaurants, supermarkets, and at home. Infact, 50% of the food waste in the developed world occurs in our homes.

Event Overview

The 3^rd event of the ‘Own What You Eat’ event series, a collaboration between Z-Rou, David Laris, Own What You Eat and Green Initiatives, aims to touch on this massive global challenge and answer some of the following questions:

• What is the reason for increasing food waste?
• How does food waste occur specifically at different levels of the food chain?
• What are some of the innovations and solutions working to address the problem?
• What can we do in our homes, considering we are both - half the problem, as well as the solution?

Join us to find out more as we bring another food education experience to have more serious conversations about what we eat, how we eat, and take responsibility for where our food comes from and where it goes!

Event Itinerary

18:30-19:15 Registrations & networking; light snacks and drinks may be served
19:15-19:30 Event introduction by GI & David Laris
19:30-20:10 Presentation by the Speakers
20:10-20:40 Open Q&A session with the audience
20:40-21:30 Food, drinks & networking / Event ends

Speakers & Panelists

Yi-Wen Lee
Subject: Food waste across the food chain - global and local overview, and several best-practices, solution and case studies.
Background: Yi-Wen is a Plant Forward Whole Foods Chef Educator, a noted member of ‘THE CHEFS’ MANIFESTO’ initiative by SDG2 Advocacy Hub and also a key initiator for many global food education programs. She is a world citizen with 17 years of fashion marketing experience in New York and China who started a transition to the world of whole foods education since 2012. She is also a co-founder of The Plant Forward LLAB with the mission to educate, collaborate and initiate real actions and positive changes using food as a social lubricant for a sustainable human health and planetary well-being system #lets.plantforward.together

Li Xin
Subject: Reducing food waste at home - the science, technology and the trade-offs.
Background: Li Xin is President of Sustenture (2014 – date) – a business consulting firm with focus on company strategy, M&A, sustainability & innovation, with MNC and SME clients in F&B, retail and packaging sectors. He is also Operating Advisor at Ares, a private equity investment firm. In this role, Li does due diligence and leadership assessment, help make operational improvements, and seek strategic investments for portfolio companies. Li serves on the boards of several food and packaging companies in the US and China, and is also a board member of Enactus China – a non-profit organization, and Vice Chair of the Food, Agriculture & Beverage Committee at AmCham Shanghai.

Rick Teh
Subject: Food waste from the perspective of a restaurateur - a problem of economics, affordability and access.
Background: Rick is an entrepreneur with 10 years experience in the F&B space, mostly in Shanghai. Prior to this he worked for 12 years in IT space in U.S. and Hong Kong. He founded Urban Soup Kitchen (USK) in 2009 that has grown into a chain of quick service restaurants in Shanghai serving soups, stews, and sandwiches. Rick also launched the USK Cooperative in April 2019, a sustainable food project focused on bringing traceable, sustainable food sources into the community. He hopes that the project will be able to support farmers who practice sustainable farming while allowing USK to play a bigger role in the food sustainability movement. Rick believe that good food should be accessible and affordable to everybody and insists on becoming an effective “food solution provider” as he learns and grows more about "real food”.

Bing Li
Subject: Making food "excess" into "access"
Background: Bing Li is the Founder and Director of Green Food Bank, the first food bank in mainland China. She obtained a PhD in Environmental Biology and has been working on environmental and social impact works for many years. She is part of this waste movement and constantly tries to find solutions combatting food waste.