The Food Banks of Mexico (BAMX) wage a daily fight against food wastewhich they estimate at 38 tons per minute at the national level and with which they could feed the more than 28 million people who live with food shortages in the country.
While, The World Bank calculates that food waste is equivalent to 4.4% of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP)about 491,000 million pesos.
Given this, organizations like food for allin the Iztapalapa mayor’s office in the Mexican capital, and the largest BAMX operations center in the entire country rescue food that was about to be wasted in Mexico City and surrounding states with which they support more than 120,000 people each week.
food gathering
Food for All has several industrial warehouses near the Central de Abastos of Mexico Cityconsidered the largest market in the world, where they store all kinds of products: from fruits, vegetables, beans, canned food and milk to cleaning products and clothing.
All of them are obtained through the collaboration of supermarkets and other companies, which give up the products that they can no longer sell, mainly due to packaging defects, but which are still suitable for consumption.
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The aisles of the hall dedicated to dry food are narrow and the three-tier shelves where food is stored are packed with boxes, although not always enough.
If we serve 120,000 people, probably knocking on our doors (there are) as many. With the (covid-19) pandemic, the need increased by 40%, especially in Mexico City and the metropolitan area. The need practically doubled for us,” Diego Martínez, the bank’s public relations coordinator, told EFE.
And although their work reduces the food needs of various communities that are often not even reached by “government institutions”, such as the mayor’s offices of Álvaro Obregón, Iztapalapa, the metropolitan area and the adjoining State of Mexico, the problem is even deeper. .
Martínez affirmed that with the amount of food that is wasted, the problems of some 60 or 70 million Mexicans could be alleviated. that, although they do not live in a situation of food insecurity, they do live in poverty.
Collaborative work for joint development
In Alimentos para Todos they do not limit themselves to delivering food and other items to the communities they support, but rather work together with them so that they grow as an institution and can obtain resources from other spaces.
Thus, they are responsible for collecting the products that correspond to them weekly in the BAMX warehouses to guarantee the “nutritional table” and distribute them among their community.
Like Jesús, Luis and Alejandro, three young people who loaded a truck full of boxes to take it to their community in the municipality of Chimalhuacán, in the central State of Mexico.
They are people who need it, more than anything because it is an area of poverty, and this is good for the families of Chimalhuacán,” said the first, 19 years old, who has been transporting food from the bank for about a year and a half.
The importance of alliances
Beyond the collaboration of supermarkets, Food for All stressed the importance of alliances with other organizations, such as the Alsea Foundation, which through the Va por Mi Cuenta movement contributes product donations, economic contributions and visibility.
Va por Mi Cuenta works throughout Mexico together with the network of Food Banks, in addition to providing specific support to children’s kitchens.
This year we have collected some 33,000 kilos of food and benefited more than 1,700 organizations. In addition to a donation of 10 million pesos (500,000 dollars) to BAMX, not only for food but for its professionalization”, explained Ivonne Madrid, director of the Alsea Foundation.
Also, assured that they are doing awareness work among their partner companies to push in the fight against waste.
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