"Generating profit might be easy, but it is hard to reach a point where you are proud of your work," says Aline Kamakian, 53, owner of Mayrig Restaurant in Beirut, Lebanon.
Over the past nine years, Kamakian has been working on reducing the environmental footprint of her business, and today she is transforming Mayrig into a zero-waste project with passion, perseverance, and hard work.
Instead of throwing away leftovers, plastics, and glass bottles together in landfills, Kamakian transforms food waste into compost that nourishes plants and plastics and glass into new useful items despite the challenges.
According to a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report, globally, 17 per cent of all food produced each year, amounting to 931 million tonnes, is wasted from households, retail establishments and the food service industry.
An estimated 3.1 billion people worldwide do not have a healthy diet, and some 828 million people go hungry. The number of people experiencing hunger has increased by over 100 million due to the pandemic prompting the need for urgent to reduce food loss and waste.
From a father's dream to a mother's recipe
Kamakian launched Mayrig in 2003 to fulfil her father's dream of having a restaurant that serves authentic Armenian food. She had been working with Armenian mothers on creating recipes and platters and decided to call the restaurant "Mayrig," which means mother in Armenian.
"The restaurant's name salutes mothers for their efforts to preserve Armenian culture and traditions, and the business aims to support Armenian mothers by offering them job opportunities and ways to generate profit," Kamakian explains.
Kamakian has been raising awareness amongst her employees on the importance of working towards greening her restaurant. "When we started sorting, my employees thought the extra tasks were inefficient and exhausting. But, with time, they started realizing how important this was to Lebanon's environment. Today, they are keen on sorting and treating waste," she notes.
After the financial crisis hit Lebanon in 2019, the cost of sorting, composting and recycling became an extra burden for Kamakian's business, and greening Mayrig was compromised for the sake of other priorities.
"The high expense of transporting the food waste into the composting facilities threatened the sustenance of the initiative," she says.
Supporting a circular economy
Before giving up on her dream, Kamakian sought funding opportunities. Fortunately, UN Lebanon, through the UNEP Regional Office for West Asia based in Beirut, was looking for restaurants in the Mar Mikhael – Gemmayze area to partner with in reducing the waste problem in Lebanon.
Under this project, which is part of the SwitchMed II Programme funded by the European Union and implemented in collaboration with local civil society organization NUSANED, the UN is supporting Mayrig by collecting their food waste. "I no longer have to worry about managing the composting of food waste because someone is taking care of that," Kamakian points out.
Under the same project, the UNEP Regional Office is partnering with seven other restaurants in the same area by providing, through NUSANED, advisory services and technical support around plastic waste management, food waste management, greening restaurants, and ways for allowing circular businesses to flourish.
In addition to restaurants, the UN is working with households to raise awareness of the importance of plastic prevention, reuse and recycling and incentivize them to contribute to a circular economy.
UNEP research shows that food loss and waste is having a major impact on the climate crisis and accounts for 8–10 per cent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. When disposed of in landfills, much of this waste is converted into methane, a greenhouse gas known for its global warming potential, 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide.
"For each kilogram of plastics that households put in our bins, they receive points that eventually become shopping vouchers at local businesses in the area, and this is one of the incentive mechanisms we will be using for the purpose of encouraging waste prevention under this project," says Rasha Sukkarieh, NUSANED Project Manager.
"In this way, we are supporting families by increasing their purchasing power and local businesses by promoting their sales, as well as creating a circular and more sustainable economy in the area," she adds.
Today, Mayrig alone produces around 20Kgs of food waste and 4 to 7 Kg of plastic per day. In a country struggling with waste management, Kamakian hopes this initiative would reduce the negative impact of restaurants on the environment.
"If you multiply these numbers by 3000, which is the estimated number of restaurants in Lebanon, you can imagine what all this plastic and waste are doing to our environment and health when dumped in the sea and on land," Kamakian notes.
In addition to reducing Mayrig's environmental footprint, Kamakian relies on recycling to decorate her restaurant. She is turning wine bottles into colourful decorative chandeliers hung on the ceiling that cannot be missed when you enter the place. She also decorates her terrace with a green wall made from recycled plastic.
For Kamakian, protecting the environment is vital for sustaining her business. "When you protect the environment, you encourage tourism, attract new businesses, and sustain your business, it's a cycle!" she says.
This story was originally published by the UN Information Centre (UNIC) in Beirut.
About the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste
The International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste observed for the third time on 29 September 2022 will make a clear call to action for public and private entities, from across the food system, and consumers, to work together to cut food loss and waste to enhance the efficient use of natural resources, mitigate climate change, and support food security and nutrition.
