How to donate mooncakes and recycle boxes in Hong Kong during Mid-Autumn Festival 2025
Millions of mooncakes go to waste every year in Hong Kong and boxes and packaging end up in landfills. Here are charities that help
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time when family and friends gather to celebrate the full moon, with food playing a major role in the celebrations.
Mooncakes – rich pastries filled with sweet or savoury fillings, often with a salted duck egg yolk in the middle to represent the full moon – are the stars of the festival, which this year starts on October 6.
Giving mooncakes is a cherished Mid-Autumn Festival tradition, one that symbolises family reunion and appreciation. For most people, the issue of food waste does not enter their thoughts – but it should.
While millions of mooncakes are gifted, millions more are thrown away – an estimated 3.2 million are expected to go to waste this year, says Feeding Hong Kong, a charity on a mission to fight hunger in the city and reduce the amount of food sent to landfills.
To raise awareness about the waste, Feeding Hong Kong hosts “Mooncake Madness”, an annual food drive campaign. Since its 2018 launch, the campaign has turned surplus into social good by redistributing more than 225,000 mooncakes to senior centres, after-school clubs, crisis centres, charity kitchens, refugee centres and other non-profit programmes that provide food to vulnerable groups.