Food waste from restaurants becomes organic fertilizer

In Dubai, so many restaurants have started not throwing away food waste but delivering the waste to a recycling facility.

For the past few years, a local startup has been collecting waste from restaurants in the city. These food scraps are used to make fertilizer.

When the food scraps are collected, they are first sorted and then composted. Such a process takes eight to 12 weeks.

“Although we live among sands, we can turn them into fertile soil. This way, we will help the agricultural sector and protect and enhance the country’s food security.

When composting, the waste needs to be turned constantly. It needs natural sunlight and heat. This ensures that the process goes properly,” informs the company’s co-founder Yousef Chehad.

Earthworms, bacteria and fungal spores are used to make the composting process better.

Already-ready fertilizer is packed in bags, and then it goes to farms throughout the Arab Emirates.

It is reported that the production of such fertilizer is not only useful for farmers. A local processing company calls the fertilizer “brown gold.”

“We have deprived landfills of thousands of tons of food waste. In this way, we have prevented 1.2 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere,” says Yousef Chehad.