A charitable man who wishes to remain anonymous recently installed a refrigerator outside of his home in Hail, Saudi Arabia. His neighbors can leave their excess food inside the refrigerator where it is kept fresh and clean. Needy people can then anonymously use this excess food without the shame of begging.
This man, who wishes to remain anonymous, has invented a brilliantly simple solution to the problems of food wastage and hunger.
Food makes up the largest proportion of the waste entering Saudi Arabia’s landfills.
A study conducted by King Saud University (KSU)’s College of Food and Agricultural Sciences estimated that 4,500 tons of food are wasted each day in Saudi Arabia. Even more food is wasted during Eid Al Adha, Ashoora, Ramadan, weddings and other celebrations.
The KSU study found that during each day of Ramadan, 30 percent of the 4 million prepared dishes are wasted. The excess food prepared for these feasts usually goes directly to the landfill, bypassing and insulting the hungry and poor people who might live in the same neighborhoods.
The Saudi man’s charity refrigerator solves two difficult problems with simplicity and compassion. It is far better to avoid buying and cooking more food than you can eat but for occasions where the excess is unpredictable and unavoidable, a donation to the charity refrigerator solves the practical problem of food spoilage and allows Muslims to follow Islamic teachings that charitable donations should be anonymous.
Though the man who came up with this idea remains anonymous, thanks to Twitter messages from religious scholar, Shaikh Mohammad Al Araifi, the idea itself is not anonymous and hopefully will spread to other parts of the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Photo from Shaikh Mohammad Al Araifi via Twitter
Author: Brian Nitz
Brian remembers when a single tear dredged up a nation's guilt. The tear belonged to an Italian-American actor known as Iron-Eyes Cody, the guilt was displaced from centuries of Native American mistreatment and redirected into a new environmental awareness. A 10-year-old Brian wondered, 'What are they... No, what are we doing to this country?' From a family of engineers, farmers and tinkerers Brian's father was a physics teacher. He remembers the day his father drove up to watch a coal power plant's new scrubbers turn smoke from dirty grey-back to steamy white. Surely technology would solve every problem. But then he noticed that breathing was difficult when the wind blew a certain way. While sailing, he often saw a yellow-brown line on the horizon. The stars were beginning to disappear. Gas mileage peaked when Reagan was still president. Solar panels installed in the 1970s were torn from roofs as they were no longer cost-effective to maintain. Racism, public policy and low oil prices transformed suburban life and cities began to sprawl out and absorb farmland. Brian only began to understand the root causes of "doughnut cities" when he moved to Ireland in 2001 and watched history repeat itself. Brian doesn't...
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