Shanghai environmental authorities are working with "green restaurants" to offer gifts to customers who are willing to take unfinished food home in order to cut down on the amount of food tossed into the garbage.

One restaurant is already offering an expensive lunch box for customers to take food home, according to the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau.

"The amount of food wasted in restaurants is huge, especially by young men who think it's a shame to take away unfinished food," said Shen Yonglin, chief of the bureau's City and Urban Protection Office.

Local restaurants produce around 1,300 tons of kitchen garbage a day, of which at least 30 percent is wasted food, Shen estimated.

The waste is caused by customers who often order more than they need to look generous, and are reluctant to take the unfinished food home in a doggy bag, thinking they will be looked down on by friends or the waiter.

A recent survey found that more than 80 percent of people often don't eat everything they order at a restaurant, and men between the ages of 20 and 40 are the biggest wasters of food.

The survey, conducted by Hill & Knowlton Shanghai, interviewed 109 people.

Fewer than 30 percent of respondents said they never considered taking leftovers home, and 53 percent said they will only ask for a doggy bag if they have a lot of food left over.

"Seniors are the only ones who are good at saving food," said Liu Dafeng, assistant manager at an outlet of Shanghai Renjia Restaurant in Jing'an District.

The restaurant gave expensive plastic lunch boxes to customers last Friday as part of a program organized by the bureau to promote frugal dining habits.

Shen said the bureau is working with a local catering industry association to promote the practice of taking home leftover food at the city's 42 "green restaurants."

The restaurants will be asked to encourage waiters and waitresses to remind customers not to order too much, and offer a lunch box if they have unfinished food.

(Shanghai Daily February 21, 2006)