3Rs of Food Waste: Reduce, Rescue, and Redistribute A Couple in Malaysia Takes Innovative Action

Around the world, more than enough food is produced to feed the global population—but as many as 811 million people still go hungry, as per Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger. After steadily declining for a decade, world hunger is on the rise again, affecting 9.9 per cent of people globally. From 2019 to 2020, the number of undernourished people grew by as many as 161 million, a crisis driven largely by conflict, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic, as per Action Against Hunger’s International Nutrition Security Policy. In this regard, Anita Khuller writes about a couple in Malaysia that started the What a Waste (WaW) initiative in 2018 to reduce food waste and poverty hunger.

- Anita Khuller

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a 2018 UNICEF Malaysia study reported that one in 10 children living in poverty had less than three meals a day. Also, as per malaysianow.com, Malaysia’s Voluntary National Review (VNR) for 2021 reports that there has been an increase in the number of children from poor families as a result of rising unemployment combined with inadequate social protection. VNR has found that more kids under five are underweight, with the prevalence increasing from 12.4 per cent in 2015 to 14.1 per cent in 2019. Malnutrition has increased due to rising poverty, and school closures have made it worse as children from poor families cannot access the Supplementary Food Program. Currently, about half a million of schoolchildren from lowincome households are provided with supplemental meal programmes in school.

COVID-19 has greatly impacted Malaysia, with more recent data from the country’s Department of Statistics projecting that the pandemic has reversed the decreasing trend on absolute poverty, causing it to increase to 8.4 per cent in 2020.

People Take Action

As an architect, Alvin’s “Eureka” moment happened when he was working on a low-cost housing project for underprivileged communities in Selangor, in what is supposed to be a well-to-do neighbourhood. He saw a family of six with small children, sharing one plate of food, consisting of mainly rice. That’s when he felt something needed to be done to improve their quality of life.