It’s Our Place To Ace Our Waste!

Posted on February 25, 2021

It was 7.18pm that Friday evening, and after a good streak with work, I was eager to call it a day.

Opening my fridge, I grabbed my wilting stalks of carrots, two eggs, some onions and the only precious piece of meat I had left – a freshwater tilapia. At lightning speed, I whipped up my own version of a dinner and quickly headed to the table for a feast – leaving the hurried mess I had conjured, selfishly uncared for.

Somehow, I had developed the habit of reading random online articles during dinner as a way of keeping myself entertained with just the most mundane information, to the juiciest global affairs. But that night, as I caught sight of a flashy ‘Did-You-Know?’ banner blinking on the right side of my screen, what I soon learned from my curious clicking of it, would eventually change me in ways I never thought was even worth paying attention to.

‘Food waste disgrace – YOU’RE part of it!’ This headline glared right at me as the click of my mouse abruptly landed me on a page with disheartening statistics on food waste. As I read on with horror and acknowledgment of these facts being obviously made to serve as a rude awakening for ignorant individuals like myself, at the end of it – I still couldn’t help but feel responsible, guilty and totally ashamed of taking certain lifestyle choices for granted.

My 15-seconds of new-found knowledge basically left me with a tasteless dinner.

It ruined my day.

The Wasted Truth In The Case of Malaysia

Here’s what got to me.

Unknown to many, as of 2020 and out of 107 countries, Malaysia STILL ranks 59th in the world to suffer from hunger and malnourishment. Can you believe it?? YET, we are still magnificent at producing over 15,000 tonnes of food waste EVERYDAY – more than enough to feed 2.9 million people – THREE TIMES A DAY!

And while in recent years, plastic consumption seemed to have taken centre stage in doing most harm to the environment, it doesn’t even compare to having almost 50 per cent of organic food waste – mostly generated from households, smothering our landfills. This appalling contribution triggers the production of methane – a super harmful greenhouse gas that’s actually 23 TIMES MORE POTENT than carbon dioxide because it absorbs a lot more heat than other greenhouse gases, which can warm the earth in a short period of time.

So, what happens then?

It is this question that completely left me numb with anxiety. Because in that moment of wonder, I recognised that ‘then’ – was a luxury word of the past, a foolish attempt at buying time, a pointless assertion that has now emerged to teach us what we’ve clearly refused to learn despite clear warnings from statistical data and expert opinions. Because the ambivalence of ‘then,’ had evidently become the unforgiving realities of our NOW as we know it – RISING SEA LEVELS AND CLIMATE CHANGE!

And to learn of all this damage over avoidable bad habits?

It all just didn’t, make, sense.

Maeko’s MunchBOT Makes It Right

As disgust and remorse slowly engulfed my conscience, I was struck with an immediate sense of relief upon discovering that I actually had a personal chance at battling this in my own time, own pace and impressively, within my own space!

Reading on, I was comforted by my acquaintance with MunchBOT – a simple, easy and odour-free food waste composting machine innovatively designed by Maeko to not only reduce food waste volume by 80 percent in 24 hours, but also transform them into a bio-organic compost!

My eyes widened with excitement, focused on one takeaway – that I now had the power to turn my daily food waste into reusable assets! Going further into the details of this cutting-edge technology, backed with almost a decade of R&D, I was totally thrilled at the chance of being part of a solution that would tackle the crude and senseless poisoning of the earth.

I mean, composting?? Like, how brilliant! This is going to greatly cause lesser garbage, reduce gases, decrease erosion, reduce the need for water, reduce pests, even reduce pesticides and eliminate smell! Heck, it’s even going to save me money on purchasing bags and bags of fertilisers for my gorgeous herbs and plants! And all of this from the simple act of turning food waste into healthy, fertile compost? How any more environmentally responsible can one get?

Finally, the magnitude of hope in all of THIS, is what made sense to me.

….

I leaned back into my chair, heaving the biggest sigh of relief to all that I had just learned in the last 27 minutes. Still plated next to me, was my dinner – cold and stale.

But it didn’t bother me one bit to take a spoonful of my soy-sauced tilapia. Interestingly, it was tasteless no more. As I munched away with pride and enthusiasm to change my ways of handling food waste, I glanced at my kitchen counter, smirking at the food scraps I had casually left behind. I thought, just how cool life is going to get, now that I know my carrot and onion peels, eggshells, even chicken and fish bones… will all be redirected to my greens in the garden as fertilisers! No food from hereon, will ever need to go to waste.

I felt encouraged. I felt inspired. If this magical MunchBOT was going to give me the chance to play my little role as superhero to save the planet, then I’m gonna take it!

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