Don?t waste food

While millions of people starve everyday across the world, at least one-third of all the food produced gets wasted in the supply chain process. The statistics are alarming. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO), the annual food wastage amounts to a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes. Compare this with the fact that one of out of every seven people go to bed hungry. Thousands of children die every day of hunger. This is such a shame and stopping this wastage can be one of the key aspects of moving towards sustainability. To create awareness about this major imbalance, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched the ?Think.Eat.Save — Reduce Your Foodprint? campaign. This is also the theme of this year?s World Environment Day which is commemorated on June 5. I was fortunate enough to be present at a special dinner on the recent launch of the Think.Eat.Save campaign which was held at UNEP Nairobi. The dinner was prepared out of food ingredients that had been rejected by supermarkets as they were not cosmetically suitable. This food would have been wasted had it not been used for this purpose. It was a real-life lesson to all of us who attended and I am now striving to carry forward this message here through my youth group, Green Hope UAE. As a buildup to World Environment Day 2013, our members will be spreading awareness about reducing food wastage. As a first step, we, ourselves, should ensure that we do not waste food in our homes. I want to reach out to all readers in the hope that they will contribute toward building a more sustainable future.