The startups tackling food waste in Mena

The startups tackling food waste in Mena

A third of all the food produced for human consumption is wasted every year around the world. That is roughly 1.3 billion tonnes of food according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN, worth an estimated $2.3 trillion, enough to feed the 820 million hungry people four times over. The amount of food lost is so vast, that if food waste were a country, it would be the world's third biggest source of greenhouse emissions, after the US and China.

Among the biggest food wasters in the world is the GCC, where in Saudi Arabia, the average person wastes 427kg of food, and in the UAE the average person wastes 197kg every year. More broadly, the entire Mena region wastes up to 250 kilograms per capita a year of food. When compared to Europe and the US, where 95kg to 115kg is discarded annually according to the Food for the Future report from E&Y and HSBC, the region's food waste issue becomes particularly stark.  

Across the wider Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, 32 per cent of food waste occurs at the consumer level, while up to 68 per cent occurs at earlier stages like production, distribution, and