Dubai: Every household in the UAE should conduct an audit — not a financial one — but an account of their own refrigerators at home. This is because food stuffs bought in excess get stored in the fridge and are often left to spoil, negatively impacting the environment in all its stages.
“We buy more [food] than we need, put it in the fridge, and half of it ends up the trash bin,” Habiba Al Marashi, Chairperson of Emirates Environment Group said during the seventh community lecture called ‘Save Wasted Food for Zero Hunger’ on Tuesday night. “Food consumption in the UAE is a critical matter of concern.”
In Dubai alone, municipality figures show food waste makes up 33 to 38 per cent of domestic waste materials that are dumped in landfills. This number increases to more than half or 55 per cent during festive seasons such as Ramadan.
As foods in landfills decompose, they generate methane, a gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms greenhouse gases. Continuous food wastage hence does not only burn holes into our pockets but also increasingly helps kill the planet.
“Majority of household waste is due to food wastage from not being used in time, whereas the rest is caused by people cooking or serving too much. In medium and high income countries like ours, food is wasted and lost mainly at later stages in the supply chain,” Al Marashi said.
But when food is wasted in the UAE, it has more negative impact to the environment as majority of the food and food products we consume are sourced from across the globe.
Based on current trends, global food production must increase by 70 per cent by 2050 in order to meet the demands of the growing world population. But this need not be the case if only people will change their food production and consumption trends, experts say.
Moez Al Shohdi, co-founder and CEO of Food Banking Regional Network and co-speaker at the lecture, said the world needs to rethink its ways in order to be sustainable.
“Around 14 per cent of the total world population (more than 800 million) is suffering from hunger. But almost half or 42 per cent of the world’s food gets wasted. If we invest in saving at least one-third of the total lost food, we can have zero hunger without increasing production,” Al Shodi said.
Al Shohdi said the UAE can help by looking into ways on how residents can save on their consumption by buying only what they need and by coming up with ways to send excess food such as dried and canned goods to needy countries.
