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Description of Invention
Food waste is a major international issue and in Malaysia itself, a total of 3,000 tonnes of edible food that is still consumable is dumped in landfills daily. The average Malaysian family wastes a kilo of food daily which is a serious waste of resources. This calls for an urgent Food Waste Management Development Plan for Malaysia. In 2018, the Malaysian government proposed studying the issue. This resulted in the Food Donors Protection Act 2020 (FDPA) which came into effect in March 2020. The FDPA aims to encourage food donation by providing protection to food donors from civil liability under certain conditions. The list of protected donors is a non-exhaustive and extensive list and includes both the public and private sector. However, the FDPA leaves much to be desired in terms of preventing food wastage. This research aims to: (i) identify and resolve factors contributing to food wastage; (ii) propose recommendations for a draft law to combat food wastage and (iii) suggest methods to reduce, reuse, recycle and distribute excess food to the needy in society.
With the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic and the ensuing loss of jobs and social hardship, NGOs came to the fore providing food and other forms of assistance to the needy. If the FDPA could legalise the donation of consumable near expiry and just expired food products, that would ease wastage and benefit society at the same time. -
Intellectual Property (IP) Status