The municipality has put up 900 containers for food leftovers throughout the city to preserve the blessing of food. Jeddah Municipality official spokesman Mohamed Al-Bugamy said the municipality has been working on several projects to preserve leftover food. "The municipality had obliged all restaurants and ceremony services to contract with charities for food distributions last year in order to redistribute the leftovers to the poor and needy. Its second initiative in the endeavor is the food waste containers," said Al-Bugamy. He added the municipality is now enable the regular citizens to play a role in serving the poor and needy and not only the restaurants. "We have signed nine different contracts with several cleaning companies. The companies will pick up the food waste and handle it differently. "The regular waste will be processed while the food leftovers will be preserved away from trash as to not contaminate it," said Al-Bugamy. He added the new initiative will not only serve the people, it will also serve the environment. "Our religion teaches us to respect the food we have. Our initiative takes into account sanitization and hygiene. All of the food is handled with utmost care and respect," said Al-Bugamy. He added the amount of waste in Jeddah Governorate alone reached 6,000 tons a day. "Sixty percent of the waste is food leftovers. There are ways to recycle food and reuse it for other purposes. "There are charities which take care of distributing reusable waste and the municipality is in close contact with such charities," said Al-Bugamy.
