Campaign to raise awareness of food waste

suppadmin | March 5, 2017

Batu Kitang State Assemblyman, Lo Khere Chiang said he is very pleased to have met Jeff, founder of WormingUp, an enterprise set up in Kuching to reduce food waste.

Padawan Municipal Council (MPP) has always been looking for ways to lessen our impact on the environment, ensuring that we recycle as much as we can, and waste as little as we can.

Jeff and the team at WormingUp approached the MPP and recommended to help with waste woes in Padawan.

WormingUp has created programs and campaigns to raise awareness of food waste in Malaysia, educating the public on what can be done to reduct its impact on the environment.

Food Waste Management Awareness Campaigns are organised and held in shopping malls through out Kuching, namely: City One, Green Heights Mall, Borneo Convention Centre, Riverside Shopping Complex, Eastern Mall, Summer Shopping Mall, Sarawak Plaza and Kuching Central.

Food Waste Awareness Talks involve the WormingUp team visiting schools, companies and events to raise awareness about food waste management, including: Popular, Youth Speak Forum, Riverside Talk, X-FAB and Sup4Good.

Educational Workshops are focussed on educating the younger generation on the importance of waste segregation, instilling good habits to benefit the future generations. These workshops are hands on, and have been held at SMK Gapor Stampin, SMK Kuching High and Popular MegaBookfair, encouraging students to make their own soap using upcycled used oil.

During events, WormingUp also collaborates with companies to reduce wastage during their events, such as: UNIMAS Convocation Festival (Confest) 2016, with 576kg of food waste collected, Rainforest Music Festival, with 386kg of food waste collected,TedxYouth@Kenyalang, with 18kg of food waste collected.

Projects have been started, such as WeekendFarmer, where volunteers experience farm work, and their products are sent to the Kuching urban poor, and babycorn planting project where the babycorn planted was donated to Society for Kuching Urban Poor (SKUP).

So far, due to the initiatives driven by WormingUp, they have:

* Upcycled up to 60,000kg of organic waste

* 126.5 litres of used oil which was converted in to eco-friendly soap

* Reached 3457 individuals

* Received help from 75 volunteers

* Provided 200 meals to Kuching urban poor

It is refreshing and heartwarming to see the younger generation so passionate and dedicated in making our world and the environment a better place for our future generations.

It is so important that this pilot program is encouraged and supported so that we can make our environment a better place!