There are many awareness campaigns, online and offline, about food wastage. But nothing seems to have changed.
Last Friday. I was sitting at a food court with my family, in a mall. I was taken aback when I saw a group of teenagers ordering more food than they could clearly finish. Minutes after the food came, they started saying that they were unhappy with how the food tasted. They left all the food and walked away.
The cleaner came and cleared the table and dumped everything in the dustbin.
I would urge people to understand that food wastage is a crime! People should be considerate when it comes to food and be thankful to be able to eat three proper meals a day. Why order excess? Why not take away the leftovers?
Thousands of people die of hunger every day.
I can proudly write that my family and I always make it a point to order only what we can finish.
Even at home, parents must encourage young children to fill their plates with just enough food and never more than what they require. They should be stopped from wasting food.
This is an issue I have been trying to fight for a long time. I work at a school and my pupils have written articles about this. We have initiated projects at school to stop food waste. Food left over at the school canteen is collected for compost. We even won the Sharjah Environment Awareness Award for our project.
But that is not enough. This issue is global. Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. It needs to be paid attention to, especially in cities like Dubai, where life is fast-paced and fast food is a very normal part of life. We need to understand the importance of our actions.
The reader works as an environment in-charge in a Sharjah-based school
