A group of young Bahraini leaders is tackling the kingdom’s food wastage problem by mapping out the community fridges scattered across the island.
The Manama Hub, part of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers initiative, has launched a project to geo-tag community fridges in numerous neighbourhoods of Bahrain on Google Maps, with an aim at tackling the 600,000kgs of daily food wastage during Ramadan.
“We have launched a project to map the existing community fridges in every neighbourhood to help people easily donate excess food,” 24-year-old Zahra Al Qallaf, who is part of the core organising team for the project, told the GDN.
“These fridges are already being managed by the community, so we are focused on mapping them to make it easy for people to find them.”
According to the Conserving Bounties Society, which runs the Bahrain Food Bank, Bahrain is amongst the top food wasting countries per capita in the Arab world, with 400,000kg of waste generated per day – a figure that jumps to 600,000kg every day during Ramadan.
So far, 20 community fridges are now available on Google Maps, and the team aims to chart even more.
In addition to Ms Al Qallaf, the core team organising the project includes food systems consultant Narjes Bukannan, 29, teacher Reem Yateem, 31, and science teacher Jenan Al Saffaf, 24.
“These fridges are managed by the people for the people, and we are hoping that by having the locations easily available, we can reduce the food wasted every day across the kingdom,” Ms Al Qallaf added.
“We have seen a very positive response from the community with more than 700 shares on social media, as people have come together to help us map these locations.
“We have also approached a local grocery store, AlSater Market, and they have expressed an interest in having fridges installed at three of their locations, in Diraz, Bani Jamra and Demistan.”
To contribute to the project, the Manama Shapers team is asking community members to use the Google Form available on its Instagram page.
The form asks contributors to provide geographical coordinates, a description of the area and specific location of the fridge as well as its current functionality and maintenance status.
“To add a further layer of food safety to the existing fridge, we are working on adding guidelines on the fridges to be followed by the food donors and recipients,” Ms Al Qallaf added.
“There is already a very good level of understanding within the community on basic food handling guidelines when putting together the packs of untouched excess food to be donated, since it is embedded within our culture.
“While the existing fridges have been maintained communally by users and members of the neighbourhood, Manama Hub is offering a set of guidelines, such as labelling the food content and adding the date. These will be added to the fridges in multiple languages.”
n The tagged locations can be found by searching for ‘Community Fridges’ on Google Maps. For more details, follow @manamashapers on Instagram.
naman@gdnmedia.bh
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