Bruno Mars 
“Producing revenue could be simple, however it’s arduous to succeed in some extent the place you might be happy with your work,” says Aline Kamakian, 53, proprietor of Mayrig Restaurant in Beirut, Lebanon.
Over the previous 9 years, Kamakian has been engaged on lowering the environmental footprint of her enterprise, and immediately she is reworking Mayrig right into a zero-waste venture with ardour, perseverance, and arduous work.
As a substitute of throwing away leftovers, plastics, and glass bottles collectively in landfills, Kamakian transforms meals waste into compost that nourishes crops and plastics and glass into new helpful objects regardless of the challenges.
In keeping with a United Nations Atmosphere Program (UNEP) report, globally, 17 per cent of all meals produced annually, amounting to 931 million tonnes, is wasted from households, retail institutions and the meals service business.
An estimated 3.1 billion folks worldwide do not need a nutritious diet, and a few 828 million folks go hungry. The variety of folks experiencing starvation has elevated by over 100 million because of the pandemic prompting the necessity for pressing to cut back meals loss and waste.
From a father’s dream to a mom’s recipe
Kamakian launched Mayrig in 2003 to fulfil her father’s dream of getting a restaurant that serves genuine Armenian meals. She had been working with Armenian moms on creating recipes and platters and determined to name the restaurant “Mayrig,” which implies mom in Armenian.
“The restaurant’s title salutes moms for his or her efforts to protect Armenian tradition and traditions, and the enterprise goals to help Armenian moms by providing them job alternatives and methods to generate revenue,” Kamakian explains.
Kamakian has been elevating consciousness amongst her staff on the significance of working in the direction of greening her restaurant. “Once we began sorting, my staff thought the additional duties have been inefficient and exhausting. However, with time, they began realizing how necessary this was to Lebanon’s surroundings. As we speak, they’re eager on sorting and treating waste,” she notes.
After the monetary disaster hit Lebanon in 2019, the price of sorting, composting and recycling turned an additional burden for Kamakian’s enterprise, and greening Mayrig was compromised for the sake of different priorities.
“The excessive expense of transporting the meals waste into the composting services threatened the sustenance of the initiative,” she says.
Supporting a round economic system
Earlier than giving up on her dream, Kamakian sought funding alternatives. Happily, UN Lebanon, by way of the UNEP Regional Workplace for West Asia based mostly in Beirut, was searching for eating places within the Mar Mikhael – Gemmayze space to companion with in lowering the waste drawback in Lebanon.
Below this venture, which is a part of the SwitchMed II Programme funded by the European Union and applied in collaboration with native civil society group NUSANED, the UN is supporting Mayrig by amassing their meals waste. “I not have to fret about managing the composting of meals waste as a result of somebody is caring for that,” Kamakian factors out.
