Stand Up, Food Waste issue Arrising

The Story

Greetings. My name is Michelle, studying BSc Mathematical Modelling in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Back in January 2020, I joined in this project CLEAN OUR PLATE organized by AIESEC in Penang as an organizing committee volunteer. AIESEC in Penang is a nonprofit organization running by youth from USM. CLEAN OUR PLATE is a project designed to resolve the Food Waste issue in the Penang community aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 12- Responsible Consumption and Production.

Before joining this project, I had never seen this food waste issue surrounding us. It is surprising when I found out that this issue has been listed as one of the global issues. In Penang, most of the food waste was dumped into the river which not only causing environmental issues such as water and air pollution, also wasting energy. It took a lot of energy to produce a packaged food, from raw material to a designated product, every process involves money and production energy, but when it ended up being food waste, we, the consumer still needs to pay to resolve the wasted food. More surprising is that more than half of the food waste is still edible.

It is the problem that people have not enough awareness of this issue and taking the food for granted. It is CLEAN OUR PLATE that targeting in raising awareness in the youth which is the future of the future as well as empowering the youth to take action on this issue.

Recently, due to the Movement Control Order (MCO), many of the organization is in hardship. However, CLEAN OUR PLATE from AIESEC in Penang takes this as a chance to improve food waste awareness in the public as MCO is a signal that people are not aware of environmental issues as well as food waste issues. We are in operation striving for this project CLEAN OUR PLATE to create more awareness. I hope that you, the one reading this, as part of the community helps us by supporting this project. If you are interested, you also can join our volunteering project in the coming July 2020 and January 2021.