ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - More than half of the food served in Erbil’s dineries goes to waste, the city’s restaurant association said on Sunday, and while some leftovers are repurposed, much of it ends up in landfills and contributes to harmful gas emissions. “Over 50 percent of the food served in restaurants is wasted,” Shukur Aziz, deputy of the Kurdistan Restaurant and Guesthouse Association, told Rudaw. Aziz attributed the cause to large appetizer portions in addition to entrees. To attract customers, restaurants often provide a variety of appetizers by default - without request - much of which goes uneaten, leaving restaurant owners with an abundance of waste. “We do not throw away the food that remains,” Dariya Obaw, a restaurant owner in Erbil, told Rudaw. Oftentimes, Obaw noted, leftovers are stored in containers for collection by livestock owners who use them as feed. “The harm of throwing away food is that it spreads foul smells, bacteria, and viruses in garbage dumps,” said Abdulrazaq Khailani, spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region’s environment board, adding that decaying waste releases harmful gases. Uncollected waste is either taken to landfills or is burned, releasing dangerous toxins and greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere. Tuesday marked the International Day of Awareness on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. “The causes of food waste at the retail level are linked to limited shelf life, the need for food products to meet aesthetic standards in terms of color, shape, and size, and variability in demand,” the UN announced on the annual day. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimated in 2022 that more than 1 billion meals per day are wasted, 783 million are affected by hunger, and a third of people globally faced food insecurity, according to a report released in March. Food security is directly linked to family income, expenditures, and how households adapt to crises, the Kurdistan Region Statistics Office summarized in a Joint Vulnerability Assessment in 2018 with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the World Food Programme (WFP). Horvan Rafaat contributed to this report.
