Dh13bn of food is wasted every year

Culture of ‘all you can eat’ means average person in the country squanders 2.7kg a day, and that is set to double in Ramadan

DUBAI // Hotels must cut back on excess and diners change wasteful habits, a Cabinet member warned yesterday, after it was revealed Dh13 billion of food is squandered each year. The average amount of food wasted by each person in the country is among the world’s highest, due largely to a culture of “all you can eat”.

And that, the Dubai Carbon Centre of Excellence says, is set to double during Ramadan. Last year it rose from 2.7 kilograms a person each day to 5.4kg.

“The message is very clear: we need to work together to find creative ways to address food waste, especially during Ramadan when we see an increase,” Dr Thani Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, said yesterday.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been seeing this message going around social media almost on a yearly basis, saying ‘save your salary, Ramadan is coming’. That means you’re going to spend all of it in Ramadan.”

About 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted globally every year, which is about a third of the total produced.

Yesterday, researchers presented the results of a Masdar Institute of Science and Technology study that monitored food waste in 45 hotels.

They found that on average, just 46 per cent of lunch buffet food was eaten and 53 per cent of food served at iftars.

Almost none of the waste was given to staff or charitable organisations.

But this is set to change. The UAE Food Bank programme, which was announced in March, will be significantly expanded this year from one outlet to five.

The banks will hand out food to underprivileged families, who will be given a card for the programme.

Much of the food will be redistributed from hotels that currently throw it out.

“We mainly deal with supermarkets, hotel groups and farms for now, and possibly manufacturers in the future,” said Emmanuelle Panis, the bank’s founder.

“We created software to manage quantities that come to the site, which should provide us with real-time information in a way that the charities we deal with know what’s available.

“They click on what they need and distribute through their own channels. Reducing waste is our main mandate.”

Ms Panis said the intention was to have 15 food banks within three years in Dubai, and copy that in other emirates.

“We talk about waste but waste is a just one way of looking at it,” she said. “It has value and this value needs to be taken care of.”

Ms Panis suggested that recycling food for biofuels and pushing for partnerships with companies that can use it for positive effects on the environment could be priorities for the future.

Apart from what can be handed out to poor families, hotel managers could do more to cut down on waste in the first place, experts said.

Dr Sanaa Pirani said the amount of food wasted at buffets was about three times higher than a la carte meals.

“We found that lunch and dinner buffets tend to be the most wasteful, followed by a la carte service and lastly breakfast buffets,” said Dr Pirani, one of the Masdar study’s authors.

“It’s not a flat conclusion that buffets are always more wasteful – it has to do with the type of food being served.

“In Abu Dhabi, a lot of hotels shifted more from lunch and dinner buffets to a la carte.” Rice was among the top food wasted as it is served in abundance in many local dishes.

“In a lot of these dishes, once the protein is consumed, carbs aren’t given lots of attention,” she said. “So striking a balance between the two should be looked at. “We came up with a modified serving dish for some dishes where you put less food but it looks as full.”

The ministry will also establish gardens in 20 schools to teach pupils about food production.

“We’re aiming to educate children and we’ll engage with the students in planting food in schools,” Dr Al Zeyoudi said. “We want the new generation to understand the process of reducing their final product so they live with it. “When it comes to consumption, they will think about the water consumed and the efforts they made until the final product has been delivered to them, so they don’t waste anything and they know the implications.”