A legislator in Thursday pushed for the drastic reduction of food waste through donation and recycling.
AAMBIS-OWA Party-list Rep. Sharon Garin issued the call as she cited a Philippine Statistics Authority data that an estimated P1.617 billion worth of rice is wasted annually by Filipino households.
The PSA data indicate that a household wastes 1.676 kilograms of rice annually and this amounts to a total of 38.507 million kilogram valued at P1.617 billion.
“There is a need to address our country’s lack of system when it comes to addressing food waste. For instance, food items continue to end up in dumpsites instead of being repurposed as livestock feed which can help our farmers,” Garin, one of the principal authors of the Food Waste Reduction Act, said.
“We should start to treat food waste reduction as a critical goal for 2019,” she added.
From the proposed education-information-communication campaign to the comprehensive multisectoral approach, the Food Waste Reduction Act proposed to create a system that will effectively address the problem of food wastage in the country. The proposed measure is also in line with the Sustainable Development Goal of eliminating hunger (SDG 2).