With a tantalizing array of satay chicken, wok-fried mud crab and chilled tiger prawns, the dinner buffet at Singapore’s Grand Hyatt hotel typically sets diners back about US$70. Those on a tighter budget and with an eye on sustainability can fill a box for one-tenth of that price.
Across Asia, tech start-ups are taking food otherwise destined for landfill and providing discounted meals through mobile phone apps.
About one-third of food is lost or wasted every year globally, and the mountains of waste are estimated to cause 8 to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions such as methane, the UN says.
Photo: Bloomberg
The Asia-Pacific region is among the worst in the world for food waste, accounting for more than half of food squandered globally.
“A common mantra that I have is that being sustainable should be attainable,” said Preston Wong, chief executive officer and cofounder of Treatsure, which collaborates with chains including the Hyatt, Accor Group and the Singapore Marriott Tang Plaza Hotel to allow app users to pick out and collect a “buffet-in-a-box” of food that would otherwise be thrown out.
“I think technology can bridge that gap,” he said.
With more than 30,000 users, Treatsure has saved an estimated 30 tonnes of food from going to waste since it launched in 2017, with users typically having to wait until the end of service before they can collect their food, Wong said.
Still, that is a far cry from the 817,000 tonnes of food waste in Singapore last year, a 23 percent increase from the year prior.
Authorities say the city state’s only landfill, Semakau, is expected to meet Singapore’s solid waste disposal needs up to 2035 and beyond.
Hong Kong faces similar problems.
It has already filled up 13 landfills, and about 3,300 tonnes of food waste per day were dumped in its remaining sites in 2020, the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department says.
“The space is very limited,” said Anne-Claire Beraud, Hong Kong country manager of Phenix by OnTheList, an app launched in the territory last year. “Everything is very dense so there isn’t a lot of space to treat all this waste.”
The app allows users to pick up a “Mystery Basket” of food at stores including Pret A Manger and local cake shop The Cakery for a minimum 50 percent discount.
So far it has sold 25,000 baskets, with each equating to about 1kg of food saved from going to waste and 4.5kg of carbon dioxide emissions avoided, the company says.
Phenix’s original platform was launched in France in 2014 and expanded to four other European countries where it has saved 150 million meals. It collaborated with OnTheList, a flash-sale company, to bring the app to Asia.
The concept of food sustainability is still in its infancy in Asia, compared with North America and Europe where authorities are cracking down. France has already banned supermarkets from throwing away unsold food, and Spain recently drafted legislation to tackle waste by fining companies. US states including California and New Jersey have laws to reduce the amount of food going to landfills.
That has boosted the popularity of apps such as Too Good To Go, which was launched in Denmark in 2016 and now operates in 17 countries including the US, Canada and the UK. It has has provided more than 152 million meals through its so-called Magic Bags, which are sold at a discount by shops and restaurants at the end of the day with items that would otherwise have been thrown out.
In a region as culturally diverse as Asia, smaller local start-ups are getting a foothold catering to their home market.
Companies “have to match that region’s culture and habits,” said Taichi Isaku, cofounder and chief product officer of CoCooking, which created the Tabete food-rescue app in Japan. “It’s an area that has to be nurtured in order to successfully introduce new technologies.”
Tabete, released in 2018 in Japan, is a free app with a similar business model to Too Good To Go. It has rescued 384,000 meals, accumulated 525,000 users, and partnered with 2,140 shops.
Tess Kermode, director of international expansion at UK-based Olio, said that companies need to “understand the culture and the people in a particular market.”
The firm operates in 62 countries including India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines. The app is mostly community based with neighbors posting free food to be picked up from their homes. So-called Food Waste Heroes also collect surplus produce from businesses and bring it home to list.
Olio said the app has helped save almost 58 million portions of food worldwide. Its largest international market is Singapore, where it has more than 125,000 users and a formal partnership with Foodpanda’s online market.
The firm has ambitions to expand but, like other apps, says a lack of awareness of food sustainability in Asia is a handbrake on growth.
“Consumer-facing technology such as applications on personal devices can be very useful,” said Anthony Bennett, senior food systems officer for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in the Asia-Pacific. “However, this topic should be considered along with increasing the overall food literacy for consumers.”
Some apps, including treatsure and Tabete, are taking such matters into their own hands and trying to educate users with tips on reducing food waste and recipes on their social media pages.
“In North America and Europe, there’s been some maturity in understanding such challenges and tackling them, but in Asia, this narrative has just begun,” Wong said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”