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Society: Discarded food could feed 30-50 million people

Consumers discarded roughly 17 to 18 million metric tons of food served in big cities in 2015, a quantity sufficient to feed 30 to 50 million individuals annually, according to a report released by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research at the China Academy of Sciences. Of the four cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Sichuan province, and Lhasa, Tibet autonomous region - surveyed in 2015, vegetables topped the list of discarded food. A series of activities themed on "eating up" has been organized nationwide since the "clear your plate" campaign was launched in 2013.