Dubai: Do you know where you waste food the most?
Dubai residents contribute to food wastage the most in supermarkets and hypermarkets because of their obsession with freshest food and aversion towards food nearing expiry and not looking good, according to Dubai Municipality officials.
Municipality’s food safety specialist Bobby Krishna said people here tend to buy only the freshest products, pushing aside a day- or two-old ones and the ones nearing expiry even if they are safe to consume. “That is where the waste really happens unlike in restaurants where people tend to finish up the food they paid for,” said Krishna.
Sometimes if there is a delay in the arrival of the food products due to any reason, he said, companies do not have the time to put the product in the market because they know that consumers will not buy the items nearing expiry. “It will cause logistical loss as well.”
Minor mislabelling issues and imperfection in looks also lead to such food wastage.
Jehaina Hassan Al Ali, acting head of awareness and applied nutrition at the Applied Nutrition Section in the Food Safety Department, said the municipality will work with hypermarkets and supermarkets to educate the consumers to avoid wastage due to misconceptions about food safety and quality.
“There is a need for a lot of education to change the mindset of the people. We will work closely with supermarkets and hypermarkets to educate the consumers to avoid such food wastage,” she said.
With the UAE Food Bank in place, food companies have now started donating such food items instead of letting them go to waste. Of the 136 tonnes of food items donated through the Food Bank in its first six months, several tonnes were such foods, officials said.
Krishna said the Food Bank receives several types of food items ranging from bakery items, baby foods, juices, chocolates, oranges, pears and raw food items including meat.
“Very often these are food items that are nearing expiry which the consumers do not prefer to buy. If they make it a habit to buy such food items and consume when they are still safe, we can avoid a lot of wastage,” he pointed out.
32 tonnes of turkey donated
The biggest donation of such items was that of 32 tonnes of turkey which Sadia donated to the Food Bank. The municipality takes the help of catering companies like Abela and Co to cook such raw food before donating them to workers, said Krishna.
“In order to guarantee the product quality, we coordinated directly with several of the Food Bank’s catering partners to deliver the turkey directly to them using our own distribution fleet that is designed to maintain freezing temperatures,” said Walid Hajj, regional logistics manager of One Foods Holdings that runs the Sadia brand.
Krishna said the whole stock was finished in a three-week window because of the short shelf life of the product.
Due to imperfections in the supply and demand chains, Hajj said, the company is occasionally left with stocks that cannot be sold to our customers as the product doesn’t meet their specific shelf life criteria.
“In the past, we would have destroyed any inventory that was not accepted for sale by our customers. But now, thanks to this initiative by Dubai municipality, we will waste less while making protein food accessible to a wider population,” he said.
