AMMAN, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Jordan launched a campaign on Sunday to reduce food waste, emphasizing that the annual volume of wasted food in the kingdom alone could meet the needs of 1.5 million people for an entire year.
When launching the campaign, Khaled Hneifat, Jordan's minister of agriculture and chairman of the Food Security Council, said food waste in Jordan is estimated at 93 kilograms per person per year, or about 955,000 tonnes of food in total, which could feed about 1.5 million people for a full year, according to a statement by the ministry.
The initiative includes a roadmap featuring several activities, such as the introduction of a training program aimed at fostering innovative solutions to fight food waste, the development of methodologies to measure food waste accurately to establish a national waste index, and the launch of a year-long national food waste awareness campaign targeting families, restaurants, hotels, and other sectors. The initiative aims to reduce the country's food waste by 50 percent by 2030.
The minister stressed the need to address food waste as it results in economic and environmental losses.
"Our way of producing and consuming food is far from being sustainable. Although the world produces more food than it needs, there are about 800 million hungry people among us in the world, and the number is increasing," said the minister.
