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Rescuing Lost Food in Malaysia Listen with ReadSpeaker

For more than five years, DKSH has been collaborating with The Lost Food Project to tackle food insecurity in Malaysia. The result: less food wastage and more people having food on their tables.

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Malaysia

The Lost Food Project is a non-profit organization in Malaysia dedicated to a sustainable future by rescuing quality, surplus food from going to landfill, and redistributing the food to more than 60 charities, soup kitchens, and numerous underprivileged communities who live below the poverty line.

Rescuing Lost Food in Malaysia

Challenge

Approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted worldwide. This happens in the form of food loss, food that is damaged as it moves through the supply chain, and food waste, edible food that is thrown away by retailers or consumers. The situation was worsened by the disruption of food supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

According to SWCorp Malaysia, the households sector accounts for over 44 percent of the nearly 17 thousand tons of food waste generated in Malaysia daily. About 24 percent or over 4,000 tons of the food waste is classified as still edible, with the quantity sufficient to provide three meals to nearly 3,000 people each day.

Approach

As a provider of essential goods, including food and nutritious products, we play a vital role in minimizing food loss and preventing food waste. We achieve this by constantly monitoring and working with our clients and customers to manage stocks carefully throughout our value chain including at the warehouses.

Since 2018, DKSH has been collaborating with The Lost Food Project (TLFP) to tackle food insecurity and combat the urban poor in Malaysia. If suitable qualitative and nutritious surplus food were identified from our value chain, we reach out to TLFP immediately for donation, in which TLFP will rechannel the donated goods to local communities and its beneficiaries in need.

Result

Throughout this collaboration with TLFP, we have reached out to more than 60 non-governmental organizations that serve the elderly, orphans, disabled, homeless, refugees, and lower-income households as well as thousands of underprivileged communities across Malaysia.

In 2022, we donated over 29,000 kilograms of nutritious surplus food and provided more than 83,000 meals to the urban poor. This effort has also successfully prevented over 72,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide from being produced.

Malaysians are still throwing away plenty of edible food daily, while some in the community are still going to bed hungry. We hope that through collaborations like this one with DKSH, we can all work together to create a more sustainable future.

Tuan Haji Ab Wahab Bin Long, CEO, The Lost Food Project

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