In industrialised cities in Asia like Hong Kong and Singapore, more than 50% of food waste happens at the consumer and retail stage. With supermarkets and online grocers in abundance, consumers can buy food almost instantly, and are completely removed from the food growing process. Without attachment, wasting food becomes easy.

But some groups are hoping urban farming can change these wasteful ways - by helping people understand how difficult it is to grow food and rebuild their appreciation for it.

In Hong Kong, Rooftop Republic takes idle rooftop spaces, such as at the Metroplaza shopping centre, or at Cathay Pacific and Sino Group’s office buildings, and works with the occupants to transform the space into farms that grow food like eggplants, blue pea flowers, and chillies. It's also working with DBS Foundation to offer gardening workshops and vocational courses, to expose more city folk to urban farming.

In Singapore, Edible Garden City also has been converting urban spaces and schools to food production. The social enterprise promotes growing localised species like Sayur Manis to help reduce reliance on imported vegetables and a wasteful long supply chain.

Highrise apartment living is no obstacle to home growers who have been planting kangkong and chye sim, and have even started their own compost bins and worm farms to convert food waste to fertiliser.

Food, Wasted is a documentary series done in partnership with DBS, exploring the reasons why food waste occurs, what some groups are doing about it and offers audiences simple but effective solutions to tackle food waste.

To learn more about why we need to work together towards zero food waste and how DBS is raising awareness on this issue: https://go.dbs.com/3cFh0Zk

ALSO WATCH:
- Ep 1: Why are we throwing away perfectly edible food? https://youtu.be/cKjnKcCKve8
- Ep 2: Why so much food is lost before it even gets to us https://youtu.be/Nn6JdjBHJ0o

*Edit: At 1:52, Gerald Fu should be spelt Gerald Foo.

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