Is your splurge on mooncakes harming the environment?

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Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for family bonding, thanksgiving, moon gazing, and mooncake binging and inevitably gifting. The sweet and savory pastries sell like hot cakes around this time of the year in China, but the business is leaving a bitter aftertaste due to its environmental impact.

The festival falls on October 4 this year, but the hype over the round confection enclosing a variety of fillings – from the traditional red bean paste, salted egg yolk and five kernels to the more daring stuffing like cream cheese, instant noodles, and pork with roses – is already in full swing.

Supermarket shelves are continuously being re-stacked with piles upon piles of brightly-colored mooncake boxes, and bakeries offering newly-introduced flavors, such as fried bullfrogs and pickles, are out of stock by noon, according to one report from China Daily.

Preparing a variety of fillings for mooncakes at a bakery in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, on September 29, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

The mooncake business has been on the rebound after the government’s anti-corruption campaign in 2013 drove sales down. The crackdown on officials saw the introduction of anti-graft and anti-extravagance measures and a ban on using public funds for lavish banquets and gift-giving. The drive left its toll on the mooncake industry, which had long thrived on luxurious packages of the delicacy being gifted to officials with questionable conduct.

Rising mooncake sales

Sales of the ritualistic sweet slipped to 10.4 billion yuan in 2013, a decrease of 21.2 percent year on year. The following year, the figure dipped further to 10.1 billion yuan.

In 2016, the market was valued at 13.5 billion yuan (2.03 billion US dollars), according to estimates by Zhiyan Consulting company, reaching a four-year high. This year, the upward spiral is expected to continue, boosted by the fact that 2017 is a leap year in the Chinese lunar calendar.

This super mooncake weighs 350 kg. /Xinhua Photo

The extra month brought the total months during the Year of the Rooster to 13, and pushed the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, to October in Gregorian calendar. The irregularity has given manufacturers more time to concoct new flavors and consumers an extended period to shop.

Shanghai Confectionery Industry Association expects a 15-percent increase in sales this year in the city, with 22,000 metric tons expected to be purchased.

Such promising prospects undoubtedly whet the appetite of sellers, but for environmentalists it’s a slice of bad news.

From shelf to garbage bin

The magnitude of food waste in China is a hard pill to swallow. Between 17 and 18 million metric tons of food ended up in trash bins in the country every single year from 2013 to 2015 – a quantity enough to feed 30 to 50 million individuals, according to a 2016 report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

An employee shows a gold mooncake at a jewelry shop in Taiyuan, north China’s Shanxi Province, September 14, 2015. /Xinhua Photo via ecns.cn

Calendar-worthy occasions, such as the Mid-Autumn Festival when families get together around elaborate meals and gifts exchange hands faster that it takes to digest the calorific pastries, are no exception.

Environmental group Green Power estimates that around 1.5 million mooncakes will be thrown away in Hong Kong – a city of just seven million residents – alone this year.

The mountains of mooncakes resulting from the current mania come with a hefty price tag – and it’s not what people end up forking out at the cash counter.

The to-be-discarded desserts in the city are expected to emit 1,102 metric tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to the CO2 output released from the use of electricity of 168 households in one year – which would take 60,000 trees a full year to absorb, according to the NGO.

On the Chinese mainland, where estimates put the quantity of mooncakes sold last year at 270,000 metric tons, the casualties can only be higher.

Colorful 3D-printed mooncakes in east China's Jiangsu Province. /Xinhua Photo

One reason behind the squandering of the pastry lies in the excessive quantities people receive during the occasion as presents. Mid-Autumn Festival cannot be spelled without mooncakes, which are as indispensable to Chinese as the need to show their gratitude (as well as standing) to others during the festivity.

Gifting craze

Thirty-two percent of those Green Power surveyed predicted they will receive more of the sweets than they can consume, and last year a similar number said they got rid of the mooncakes because they were gifted too many.

There is a sense of schizophrenia in how Chinese perceive mooncakes. Exchanging them is at once at odds and in cahoots with people's wants – depending on which end of the gift handover they are at.

On the one hand, social responsibilities and a decades-long tradition mean that gifting mooncakes is a must. Residents of Hong Kong are buying 2.67 boxes of mooncakes on average this year, mostly for others.

A baker wraps mooncakes at a bakery in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, September 29, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

On the other hand, they admit that the season’s customary staple is no longer their cup of tea. Fifty-seven percent of respondents to Green Power’s survey said they would rather not get mooncakes as gifts, while around 10 percent admitted they do not fancy such presents.

Wrapped in culture and plastic

The industry’s survival on gifting also means that mooncakes are in general more a feast to the eyes than the taste buds.

Packaging has evolved into a treat in its own right as companies attempt to cash in on the culture of “face consumption” in China and vie for shoppers’ attentions with the intricate designs of their boxes and their elaborate execution.

The battle of the boxes has translated into packaging accounting for 32 percent of the mooncake boxes, according to a 2013 report by online magazine ChinaFile. It is no shocker that packaging costs have surpassed that of the ingredients needed to make the sweets (20 percent of the total) when each mooncake inside a gift box is placed in a container then individually wrapped before being boxed then wrapped again.

Mooncakes at a bakery in Suining, southwest China's Sichuan Province, on September 23, 2017. /Xinhua Photo

The fancy wrappings and stylish boxes eventually find their way to the landfills, increasing China’s carbon footprint.

China’s wasted packaging material in 2009 stood at 40 million metric tons, or one-third of the country’s solid waste.

The government has worked towards addressing the issue of excessive packaging as early as 2010, with the country’s standardization administration issuing regulations prohibiting more than three layers of food packaging and capping the cost packaging at below 12 percent of the sale price.

These measures, however, don't seem to have fully deterred customers and manufactures from souring the environment with these time-honored sweets.