Danone Egypt Launches its “Zero Food Waste” initiative

IN LIGHT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL VISION TOWARDS ACHIEVING FOOD SECURITY

Donating its surplus products daily, to be distributed by EFB to those in need

Donations will be used to prepare school meals for approximately 35,000 students

Inspired by Egypt’s commitment towards its transformational SDG journey as well as contributing to Danone’s Global goal to reducing 50% of food waste by 2030; Danone Egypt launched its initiative towards “Zero Food Waste” in partnership with The Egyptian Food Bank (EFB). The partnership is built upon finding sustainable ways to reduce food waste in Egypt.

Food waste is one of Danone’s global key focus areas. Today Danone Egypt will lead this revolution of ending food waste in Egypt by donating its daily surplus of products to its partner The Egypt Food Bank; utilizing their solid & robust database, to benefit almost 35,000 students as well as other eligible recipients.

Haitham Sadek, General Manager of Danone Egypt and North East Africa, says: “Danone Egypt’s mission is to provide healthy food solutions for a healthy, happy Egypt. Our partnership with the EFB will help us achieve that by expanding our reach to the community we operate and directly contributing to Egypt SDG goal of achieving food security.”

Sadek further elaborates that this partnership will focus on enriching school meals for around 35,000 students with essential dairy products in addition almost 5,000 of EFB’s most eligible recipients in orphanages and elderly homes in the greater Cairo region.

“We invite all companies to join the “Zero Food Waste” initiative to end food waste in Egypt, ultimately driving Egypt to achieve its SDG goals, we need to form a strong coalition together with the government to transform this into a sustainable operating model for all businesses in Egypt”

Praising the initiative launched by Danone Egypt to eliminate food waste, Mohsen Sarhan, EFB CEO, said that the “Zero Food Waste” initiative is in line with EFB’s mission of ensuring food security”

Dr. Mohammed Al-Karmany Head of Research Laboratory Sector at the EFB, stressed on the importance of adopting the “Zero Food Waste” initiative on a national level to ensure surplus food supplies from companies, homes, restaurants, hotels, etc. are sustainably repurposed to support food security, complying with food safety measures, and executed in a systematic approach to preserve human dignity.

“This initiative is at the core of The Presidential strategy to ensure Egypt achieves its SDG goal on providing Food Security. The international estimates indicate that about one third of the food produced annually worldwide, approximately 1.5 billion tons of food, is wasted, while more than one fifth of the children of the world, under the age of 5, suffer from malnutrition-related diseases, such as stunting and anaemia “Al- Karamany said.