UTOPIA
MYSAVEFOOD COLLECTS ACCESS FOOD, PREVENT WASTE
NILAI - Taking the initiative to reduce food waste, MySaveFood was established back in 2016 with the objective to create an effective systematic process for food waste management at selected Ramadan bazaars around West Malaysia.
MySaveFood is an initiative by Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI), Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management (SWCorp), Pertubuhan Pemuda GEMA Malaysia (Pemuda GEMA),World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF Malaysia) and now is associated with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (UNFAO).
“MySaveFood initiative helps to promote a comprehensive and also effective plan to reduce food loss and waste going to landfill especially during Ramadan as we know the spike in food and drink wastage is 15 to 20 percent higher than another month.
“At the same time, we try to educate the bazaar seller to plan ahead before selling which can impact their sales revenue,” says the Project director of MySaveFood Nilai, Mohd Syamil Mokhtar, 31.
Food waste at Ramadan bazaar has become a significant event every year, no matter how much awareness has been spread through environmentalist and public service announcements.
Even though food waste is organic, somehow it could lead to harmful discharge of gas that can pollute the environment such as methane gas which is one of the contributors to global warming.
Syamil also stated that currently they are located at 19 locations around Malaysia and has plans to invite as well as collaborate with more non-governmental organizations (NGO) in the upcoming years to reduce more food waste.
Appointed volunteers for MySaveFood would gather the unfinished food from vendors at Ramadan bazaar and collect the data before distributing it to people who are in need.
According to the leader of the voluntary team, Nur Syazwani Mohd Radzi, 23, food waste management is actually a huge issue globally. Not only in Malaysia, the global food waste issue is actually happening every year not only during Ramadan.
She further stated that while MySaveFood is actually trying to reduce the food waste during Ramadan, she believes according to the data that she received, those food wastes actually have been saved by this program initiative.
They could help those in need and avoid food waste even more as well as educate people about the benefits of reducing food waste.
MySaveFood’s volunteers at Nilai Ramadan bazaar sorting the foods they received.
(Source: Telegram Channel MySaveFood)
Syazwani who has experience volunteering with MySaveFood for two years also stated, reducing food waste can lower the greenhouse emissions globally including preventing the pollution issues while disposing food wastes.
MySaveFood also correlates with Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 12.3 which aims to reduce food losses in the production and supply chains to halve per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels globally by 2030.
MySaveFood has saved a total of 6910.7KG of food waste by 20 April 2022.
(Source: Telegram Channel MySaveFood)
This action can be continued and awareness can be spread effectively when more Ramadan bazaars are involved in the project and help in food waste disposal, at the same time can lower the global warming rate.
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