SHANGHAI ¨C The next time you wipe the uneaten remains of your dinner into a trash bin, pause a moment and think of China. Despite the fact that 11.5 percent of the mainland¡¯s population was undernourished between 2010 and 2012, Chinese still manage to waste more food than Americans on an annual basis.
A lot more, in fact, according to data presented earlier this week by Wu Zidan, China¡¯s deputy director of the State Administration of Grain. Wu noted that Chinese waste more than 38 million tons of grains ¡ª mostly rice and wheat ¡ª every year. (There¡¯s no good data on total Chinese food waste, unfortunately.) By contrast, in 2012 Americans tossed a total of 36.43 million tons of food overall, according to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Of course, the disparity shouldn¡¯t come as a total surprise. There are four times as many Chinese as Americans, and many of them have entered the middle class over the last 30 years. On a per capita basis, Chinese still waste far less than their U.S. counterparts.
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