The Clean Plate campaign is a movement initiated in 2013 to reduce food waste and ensure food security in China. While the initial campaign originated from grass-roots society, it soon received government encouragement and support. Aligned with General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign and goal to instill more discipline among party members, there were government instructions and demands to limit the government spending on social banquets, which was a big contributor of food waste. However, other than that measure, the government mostly stayed out of the private realm with no central regulations on private practices of food waste. There was some local effort, but most of it died out soon.
On 13 January 2013, a public charity organization in Beijing launched an anti-food-waste campaign which they later referred to as the "Clean Plate" campaign. Initially distributing posters and flyers in restaurants and gas stations, the campaigners quickly drew the attention of state media, which covered the event on social media, making the campaign widely recognized and followed across China in ten days. Many saw the event as an example of the spread of public opinions and campaigns on social media in China, contemporary with the rise of internet media and smartphones. Some viewed the official endorsement of the campaign as not only targeting food waste in China, but also in line with Communist Party chief Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, which urged cadres and government officials to stop lavish lifestyles.
In 2017, it was found that food waste had almost returned to the levels they were at before the campaign started, showing the limited impact of the Clean Plate campaign in 2013, which was mostly led by individual actions. Starting then, new incidents of serious food waste in China have caught public attention, like the bad social influence of food waste from "eating livestreams" and the incident of fans dumping tons of dairy drink for the QR code within the lid to support their idols in a talent selection show Youth with You 3. This prompted further government responses.
On 11 August 2020, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced a second Clean Plate campaign and urged the public to reduce food waste, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure the food security for the mass population. Most recently, on 29 April 2021, the Anti-food Waste Law was passed through the Standing Committee of the Thirteenth National People's Congress.
Background
Food waste in China The 2018 WWF report on food waste in Chinese cities shows that a total of 17–18 million tons of food are wasted annually in Chinese cities. On average, each citizen wastes 93 grams of food per meal in the cities surveyed (Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Lhasa), in which vegetables and staple foods constitute the majority of the waste. The quantity of food waste is found to be associated with a variety of factors: restaurant size, purpose of the meal, etc. On average, tourists waste more food than local citizens; larger restaurants have more serious food waste than smaller ones; and friend-gathering and business-purposed meals contribute to higher food waste. The study also found the food waste in primary and secondary schools to be above average, potentially due to low satisfaction with the quality of school dining.
Consumer food waste in China constitutes a significant portion in the country's total food waste. An estimated 50 Mt of grain in China is annually wasted at the consumer stage, compared to 35 Mt at pre-consumer stages. 90% of consumer-stage food waste happens in mid- to high-end restaurants and canteens in China, whereas in western countries such as the European Union, household food waste plays the biggest role (42%, 38 Mt), and the food service sector trails behind at 14%. Alternative sources estimate the annual consumer food waste in China to be about 17–18 Mt in 2015, equivalent to the annual consumption of 30–50 million people.
Consumer culture and behavior In special occasion dinners, consumer culture plays a large role in producing more food waste. As a matter of etiquette, consumers tend to order more than they can consume. The abundance of beverages in these dinners also reduces food intake, increasing the quantity of food waste. In China, the use of a "doggy bag" is not only traditionally frowned upon as a sign of poor financial status, but also economically discouraged as most restaurants charge the customers for the doggy bags. This factor is found to reduce consumers' willingness of packing leftover food, along with the poor environmental soundness of the doggy bags themselves.
Consumer dietary knowledge and preferences also contribute significantly to food waste. Risk-averse consumers consciously throw away seemingly fresh food earlier, and urban consumers with access to more various and well-processed food options waste less than rural consumers in household food production. In China, researchers found a relation between dietary knowledge and household food waste. Rural and low-income consumer's dietary knowledge is found to increases the quantity of food waste more substantially than that of the urban consumers. Conversely, more dietary knowledge in high-income households and communities with higher development index decreases the quantity of food waste, presumably through education on dietary knowledge.
Climate change and food security
The climate crisis profoundly challenges the world's food supply, particularly in less-developed regions. Climate change affects the environmental conditions for agricultural production by raising average temperatures, altering precipitation patterns, and inducing more extreme climate events. This is an accelerating process as the climate crisis continues to unfold in the near future, threatening global crop production and putting an additional 1–183 million people in food insecurity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identifies low-income consumers to be the most affected, especially women, who have been more involved in the food source of households.Mbow, C., C. Rosenzweig, L.G. Barioni, T.G. Benton, M. Herrero, M. Krishnapillai, E. Liwenga, P. Pradhan, M.G. Rivera-Ferre, T. Sapkota, F.N. Tubiello, Y. Xu, 2019: Food Security. In: Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, E. Calvo Buendia, V. Masson-Delmotte, H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, P. Zhai, R. Slade, S. Connors, R. van Diemen, M. Ferrat, E. Haughey, S. Luz, S. Neogi, M. Pathak, J. Petzold, J. Portugal Pereira, P. Vyas, E. Huntley, K. Kissick, M. Belkacemi, J. Malley, (eds.)]. In press.
Decreasing food loss and waste could help with both emission reduction and food security. The IPCC estimates that 25–30% of food is wasted in production and consumption globally, which, during 2010–2016, equates to 8–10% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, managing food waste becomes a significant mitigation measure in the agriculture sector.
In 2020, Chinese food security is under pressure due to the joint effect of long-term factors such as climate anomalies and decrease of rural labor, as well as short-term emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic and African swine fever. A rare typhoon struck the country's main corn production area in the northeast before the autumn harvest, resulting in a production decrease and price surge of the main source of grain in China, alongside summer floods earlier in the year. On the meat market, the 2019–2020 African swine fever outbreak had already increased the price of pork, the most consumed meat in China, by 135.2% in February, only to drop in October after 19 months of increase. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many countries to tighten export control of grains, decreasing China's crop import and putting pressure on the country's ability to self-sustain. The pressing situation is cited by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping and official Chinese media, as well as other press sources, as a motivation for the second round of the Clean Plate campaign in 2020.
History
2013 The Clean Plate campaign is a movement initiated in January 2013 by a public-spirited group IN_33 with members from various industries. IN_33 advocated eating up everything from one's plate, aiming to reduce food waste and ensure food security in China. This group handed out flyers and posters in Beijing and reached out to many restaurants to help them advertise the concept of "clean plate". It also used online platforms to encourage people not to waste food. Their posting of pictures of clean plates at meals launched a trend for lots of netizens to follow. On Weibo, the social media platform of the original post, there were over 50 million retweets within days.
Soon, this campaign became widely known and reached the government. Starting on 23 January, one of the largest news industry in China People's Daily published several favorable editorials on the Clean Plate campaign and encouraged more people to follow its cause. Because People's Daily is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, it is known for being the direct channel voicing the Chinese Communist Party's policy platforms and viewpoints. On 28 January, Chinese leader Xi Jinping gave instructions on food waste in a report from Xinhua News Agency, which is the official state-run press agency of the People's Republic of China. He stated that the food waste in China is astonishing, and considering some Chinese people still live under the poverty line, it was necessary to strike down waste and restore the frugal tradition of the Chinese civilization. He also urged the relevant authorities to take action, and public officials to be the model for reducing waste.
Along with the Eight-point Regulation stipulated in December 2012, which also included clauses of limiting the resources and consumption for government officials using government funds, there has been great improvement in food waste in the government sector. However, although private actions like promoting half-size dishes, advocating for to-go boxes, and rewarding customers for finishing all food produced some results locally, the government mostly stayed out of the campaign on regulating food waste in the private realm.
2017 Four years later in 2017, after the high tides of popularity faded, the impact of the Clean Plate campaign could be viewed more objectively. The chairman of the executive board of Goubuli, one of the most famous stuffed baozi restaurants, told the reporter that there were much fewer government branches holding banquets in restaurants using government funding. Most orders taken were from private families. Another major improvement was made in the education sector. Many primary and secondary education institutions embraced the Clean Plate campaign. Schools hosted lessons and programs educating students not to waste food, with school teachers taking the initiative as good examples continue to be an integrated part of school disciplinary and advocacy even four years after.
However, in many other sectors, the food waste trend had returned. In Wuhan, many restaurants had scaled back their commitments to the Clean Plate movement. Popular "half-sized dishes" were no longer provided in many restaurants. One Tianjin company specializing in processing biodegradable waste told reporters that biodegradable waste amounts declined sharply in the beginning of the Clean Plate campaign in 2013. However, levels of waste began climbing in the following years, indicating that the remaining impact of the Clean Plate campaign is very minimal four years after it started.
2020