The Dubai Municipality successfully managed to reduce food spoilage in the Emirati nation by a massive 73 percent in 2017.

“We have reduced food spoilage to 3,670 tons in 2017, compared with 13,586 tons in 2016,” said Food Safety Department head of food trade control section Dr. Essam Al Hashimi.

Al Hashimi spoke on the subject revealing that the section managed achievements in the past year that contributed to the upturn in the level of practices applied in the food trade control field.

“The unprecedented achievement in reducing food wastage has been the result of developing and implementing a series of alternative solutions to avoid the food getting damaged. We have carried out recycling of 1,953 tons of food and 1,426 tons of food was transferred to the UAE Food Bank during the year 2017,” he said.

Al Hashimi also expressed his delight at the progress made with regard to overall productivity. The quantity of food shipments made in 2017 increased substantially to 351,660 from 345,291  that was recorded in 2016.

Al Hashimi also reported an increase in the import and export of food items recorded by the Municipality’s electronic system. “A total of 633,850 food categories were registered in the system last year, compared to 532,128 food items in 2016. In addition, there was a continuous increase in the registration of food companies in the system as 15,973 companies registered in 2017, compared to 12,657 in 2016,” he concluded.