Young Professional Forum: The Future of Food Sustainability in China

With nearly 800 million urban consumers, the topic of food sustainability has been a great concern for many as the middle class have high quality standards.  In China, r food security, affordability and safety are at their peak, the opportunities entrepreneurs and innovators to deliver innovations in product and process are growing by the day. To better understand the challenges, and the opport…

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2018 – The Year of Strategic Sustainability

Happy New Year and welcome to 2018; the year that sustainability goes strategic in China. Yes, we know that this may appear to be an overly optimistic view of 2018, and some of you might be wondering what we at Collective Responsibility were drinking over the holiday. But while we were on break reflecting over the work we have done, the conversations we have had, and the regulations we have see…

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Innovative Solutions for Managing China’s Food Waste

While the topic of food waste has been a hot topic in the West, fueled in part by stories of 3,000 miles Caesar salads, in China the topic of food waste is only starting to become a topic of discussion. Unlike in the West though, where food waste is seen as a problem to be solved to avert future food crisis or is linked to larger problems like climate change, in China the problem has largely becom…

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Food-Water-Energy Nexus in China: Challenges and Opportunities

Moving towards an ever increasing urban world and the pressure and strains that richer more expectant consumers place on the worlds resources put our ecosystem and ability to provide for the populations at risk. The food-water-energy nexus is at the centre of this considered development. The three areas are intrinsically linked and underpin almost all areas of human consumption and activity. Th…

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Qatar’s Food Security Crisis: Lessons for China

You might be forgiven for thinking that politics is politics and food and resource provision is left to business, but more and more so implications of politics on a country's ability to feed and power its population are increasing. The current scenario in the Gulf states is proof of this, on 5 June, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries severed ties with Qatar and moved to cut off land, sea and…

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Food Waste Management: A MASSIVE Growth Opportunity in China

With China’s growing number of urban consumers, more and more pressure is being placed on the system to account for the outputs of cities, particularly on its food systems. One of the growing concerns is the issue of managing the sizeable amount of food waste that is coming from restaurants, canteens, and households. It is a concern that is increasingly strained by the poor waste management pr…

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Reducing China’s Food Packaging Waste through Innovation

As the largest city in China, Shanghai has an important role in innovating and contributing to a global solution to the problem of food packaging waste. With over 24 million people living in Shanghai, materials sustainability, particularly that of plastics, is a significant issue. Waimai or food delivery, which is extremely common in Shanghai, creates large amounts of waste due to the plastic c…

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[NEW WEBSERIES] #AskTheCollective: Episode 001

As a way to engage with you, our audience, we are happy to announce that Episode 001 of the #AskTheCollective video series is now live! This episode features topics ranging from food waste in China to the reality of China's pledge to become an "ecological civilization". Special thanks to our askers: Travis Opocensky, Hunter Lovins, John Dennis Liu, Ariel Muller, and Rob Watson. #AskTheCollectiv…

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US Exports Trillions of Showers to China

Water is our most important natural resource, it has no replacements or substitutes and all human activity in some way relies on it to function – from the basic biochemistry of the body to large-scale thermal electricity production. Once abundant in many areas, as the planet’s population has grown and poorly managed industrial processes have polluted water sources all over the world, scarci…

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Food and Sustainability in China

In February, Richard Brubaker, Founder and Managing Director of Collective Responsibility gave two presentations to DOW Agriculture leadership and sustainability teams on the sustainability and the future of food in China. As one of the largest firms in the food & agricultural sector and one whose products extend throughout the food & agricultural value chain, Rich covered a wide ra…

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China’s Food Waste Challenge

The impact from the sheer level of food waste in China is felt economically, environmentally, and politically: Economically, because farmers and consumers in effect pay for the waste as middlemen, processors, brands, and retailers are able to protect their margins more effectively. Environmentally, as, for every unit of food wasted, China’s precious water resources are wasted while at the…

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