This Abu Dhabi hotel is cutting down on food waste by feeding stray animals brunch leftovers - and it's brilliant
8 July 2019
| Last updated on 10 July 2019
Source: Jamal Al Breiki - Chef J Gourmet
Leftover food from lavish hotel meals are minced, processed, and prepared to feed stray animals in the city
After seeing the amount of food waste made from leftover brunches, 27-year-old Emirati chef and animal welfare volunteer Jamal Al Breiki of Chef J Gourmet, looked to solve two problems at once.
Al Breiki worked with Abu Dhabi hotel Fairmont Bab Al Bahr, Springbok Butchery and Catering, and Animal Action UAE in an ingenious initiative to cut food waste by serving the hotel's leftover Friday brunch to stray animals in the emirate.
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On Friday, July 5 uneaten and leftover meals from Fairmont Bab Al Bahr's kitchens were collected, minced and processed, and given to stray animals staying at Cloud 9, an Abu Dhabi-based pet hotel with a grooming and veterinary center.
Al Breiki and staff ensured that no bones or other harmful ingredients remained in the distributed doggy bags, collecting an estimated 30kg of edible food.
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“Think about how much food that is. It is a shame to see that amount of food being wasted," Al Breiki said.
According to him, if only 10 brunches teamed up to gather leftover food, an estimated one tonne of food can feed the hundreds of stray animals in Abu Dhabi.
Since its test run on Friday, at least three more hotels have expressed interest in following the project, now called The Doggy Bag Initiative UAE. A pet-owner himself with four rescue dogs, he expressed that he hoped to expand the initiative across the emirates.
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