“Imagine this, every 18 days, the amount of edible food that Malaysians throw could fill the Petronas Twin Towers to the brim!”
This is what Alvin Chen of What A Waste (WaW) told us, highlighting just how much good food consistently goes to waste.
Food surplus and wastage have long been major problems in Malaysia, and we’ve seen several organisations try to tackle it over the years.
One that has been doing it for about 3 years without ever having officially ‘launched’ is WaW, a social enterprise that fights food waste by immediately rescuing food surplus and passing them on to needy families.
“A snack to some is a meal for others.”
WaW rescues both perishable and dry food, and “no food is too little to rescue because a snack to some is a meal for others”, Alvin said.
They’ve even rescued as little food as a single portion, but they’ve got understanding food donors who will accumulate their dry food items before contacting WaW for collection.
This helps keep WaW’s cause a feasible one because the logistics cost of their operations is a very high one.
Besides a portion of the platform’s running cost being fuelled by the proceeds from Angela’s eco-products business Beebox, all rescue missions and operations were fully funded by the co-founders.
After about 50 food rescue missions, the community, in return, insisted on reimbursing WaW’s logistics cost.