National awareness campaign to reduce food waste launched

Amman: Minister of Agriculture and Chairperson of the Food Security Council, Khaled Huneifat, launched on Sunday the National Awareness Campaign to Guide Behavior to Reduce Food Waste.

In the presence of Ministers of Awqaf, Mohammad Khalaileh, and Government Communications, Muhannad Mubaidin, Huneifat said, “Our way of producing and consuming food is far from sustainable or fair. Although the world produces more food than it needs, there are about 800 million hungry people living among us, and the number is increasing.”

He added that the world annually wastes 931 million tons of food, which is equivalent to one-third of its food, calling for thinking about the amount of resources used to produce this amount of wasted food and the extent to which reducing waste by 50% would improve global food security conditions.

He pointed out that food waste in Jordan is estimated at 93 kilograms per person per year, i.e., about 955 thousand tons of food, which is enough to cover the food needs of about 1.5 million peopl
e for a full year. He stressed that the challenge of increasing food waste is of great importance due to its negative economic, environmental, and social impacts, which directly affect limited natural resources.

Huneifat also indicated that the “No Food Waste” initiative includes a clear roadmap that includes many activities, most notably the launch of the Creative Training Program for the Food Waste Challenge, which was organized in cooperation with the Swiss NGO, CEWAS. The hackathon focused on two tracks: the entrepreneurial track and the research track. The entrepreneurial track aims to promote innovative solutions to manage and reduce food waste, while the research track, in cooperation with the Department of Statistics, aims to develop methodologies for calculating food waste in order to create a national indicator of waste.

He said that the Food Security Council, in cooperation with the World Food Program (WFP), will launch a one-year national awareness campaign on food waste targeting households, fa
milies, restaurants, hotels and other sectors.

He added that the campaign aims in its first phase to raise public awareness of food waste, its size and impact, and to encourage the community to adopt more sustainable practices to reduce food waste. The second phase seeks to change food waste practices through social and behavioral guidance. The campaign will work to organize efforts to create a culture of stopping food waste, through schools, mosques, churches, media and social incubators, with the aim of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030.

He pointed to the responsibility of everyone to adopt the campaign, especially in light of the climate crisis, the decline in supply, the conflicts that we witness daily, and the impact of food shortages on communities experiencing wars, especially the unjust war on Gaza.

For his part, Minister Khalaileh said that the Ministry of Awqaf is ready to cooperate with the campaign through sermons and religious lessons and under the title of avoiding extravagance and preservin
g blessings, especially during the holy month of Ramadan.

In turn, Minister Mubaidin said that stopping waste is part of the government’s discourse, and it is an issue that concerns everyone and this effort should be supported at the national level. He added that the Ministry of Government Communications will cooperate in supporting this initiative by promoting media awareness of waste figures, its future impact and the need to correct behaviors in all sectors.

The campaign includes food waste management initiatives, and the Food Security Council is currently working, through the Ministries of Agriculture and Social Development, in cooperation with the WFP, to establish a specialized union that includes associations concerned with food waste, to institutionalize and coordinate initiatives related to wasted food. 15 local initiatives have been identified to manage food waste, and a report has been prepared on the challenges facing these initiatives.

Source: Jordan News Agency