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Brunei’s battle against binning good grub
Food for thought
LIFESTYLE
Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there. You peek
into the fridge, spot a sad-looking broccoli, and
mutter a half-hearted “I’ll cook that tomorrow”
beforeclosing thedoor…again. But what happens
when tomorrow never comes?
In Brunei, that scenario plays out a little too often.
In fact, nearly a third of all waste that ends up
in landfills is food. Not bottles, not plastics, not
that drawer of tangled wires we all have, but
edible, often perfectly fine food.
A 2019 waste study revealed that food waste
made up a whopping 32 per cent of the 500–600
tonnes of rubbish dumped daily at the Sungai
Paku Engineered Landfill in Tutong. That’s a
mountain of meals gone to waste.
But this isn’t just about mess or missed dinners.
Every sliceof bread or spoon of ricewe toss takes
with it the land, water, energy and human effort
it took to produce. In a nation like Brunei, where
food security and environmental protection go
hand-in-hand, this kind of waste carries weight.
So, what can we do about it? Quite a lot actually,
and the good news is, it doesn’t have to be
complicated.
GREENER PLATES, CLEANER
BINS
Cue the Eco Food Waste Initiative, Brunei’s
homegrown effort to turn the tide on food
waste. This isn’t just a recycling campaign, it’s
a movement.
Led by theDepartment of Environment, Parks and
Recreation (JASTRe), it aims to rope in everyone
from hotel chefs to home cooks in a joint effort
to waste less and save more.
Recent stakeholder meetings brought together
café owners, catering companies and restaurant
managers to learn about practical solutions, like
turning leftovers into compost or repurposing
kitchen scraps into fertiliser. Not only does it
cut costs, it also cuts emissions.
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BORNEO BULLETIN YEARBOOK 2026