(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Â To mark today's World Environment Day, EAD plans a series of activities to highlight huge wastage of food that also results in huge wastage of resources and climate change
The Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD) is marking World Environment Day (WED) by organising a number of activities to increase the community's awareness on the environmental impact of the food choices, and encourage public to make wise decisions when buying their groceries and when cooking their meals in order to waste as little food as possible.School to observe paperless day today
Staff Reporter
Thousands of students along with the teachers and administration staff of the Delhi Private School (DPS) in Sharjah will observe a paperless day today to mark World Environment Day.
As part of the initiative aimed at creating awareness about the necessity of paper and the need to plant more trees, the school will hold paperless activities for each section from KG1 to Grade V. No paper will be used for administrative work as well. Students will not carry books to the school and there will be a lot of fun-filled activities carried out by each department which involves learning.
Each department will have its own activity, like for the science department, children of Grade 3 are asked to bring different parts of plants which we eat. Each one will talk about the things they bring. In the activity called 'bunk the junk', Grade 4 students will be bringing in food according to the nutrient assigned to each of them. Grade 5 children will select environmentally important words and enact topics related to them.
The headmistress will be planting a sapling of a fruit tree on the school premises, the school said in a press release, adding that the students have already learned to reduce, recycle and reuse waste. "The Drisya Room of the school is full of things that children have made out of waste materials," it added.
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The theme for this year's World Environment Day celebrations is 'Think.Eat.Save', which is an anti-food waste and food loss campaign that encourages public to reduce their foodprint. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year.
This is equivalent to the amount of food produced in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.
This is when one in every seven people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of five die from hunger daily.
Fozeya Ibrahim Al Mahmoud, Director of Environmental Outreach Division, EAD, said: "Around 39 per cent of the emirate's municipal solid waste is organic material. This is disposed of each year, contributing to landfills, carbon emissions and ultimately contributing to climate change, according to a report published in 2011 by the Centre of Waste Management - Abu Dhabi (CWM)."
She added, "There are many possibilities as for how we can change our unsustainable consumption habits while also improving our quality of life. To do more with less is essential for us to live within the resources the planet has to offer.
Changing our current living standards requires us to adopt innovative and creative solutions in the way we use and dispose of the products and services we own and consume.
This could enable a transition to more sustainable activities and lifestyles while also protecting the world's natural resources.
"Many of the our priority areas (climate change, water resources, biodiversity and waste management) can be related to the campaign to reduce food waste and the foodprint. It is a serious global issue that can be tackled locally here in Abu Dhabi."
While many food products are ultimately biodegradable, its non-consumption means that precious resources used in its cultivation and productions are wasted, such as energy, water and materials used for its packaging. Carbon emissions resulting from the food's transportation, storage and disposal also contribute to climate change.
"Abu Dhabi is facing this issue especially in Ramadan, where tonnes of food are discarded. All residents in Abu Dhabi can reduce their environmental impacts and still live comfortably. By reducing, reusing and recycling, we can all play a part in resolving the problem of our growing waste."
In line with this WED, the EAD has agreed with the Saving Grace Project team and a Quattro Group to donate approximately 250 meals daily of their leftover food to needy people over the next five years.
During this day, the EAD will increase its staff awareness through electronic leaflets and e-collaterals. Also, the agency will organise an interactive workshop for the EAD's Environmental Ambassadors and a trip to the Emirates Environmental Technology - Al Ain in coordination with the Centre of Waste Management - Abu Dhabi. On June 7, preachers at Abu Dhabi mosques will also highlight the theme of this day.
To celebrate this day, the EAD has developed tools that can help government agencies and private companies and general public to facilitate World Environment Day. These include emailer with "Top 10 tips on how to reduce food waste", email signature, digital banner and pull-ups.
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