Food is much more than what is on our plates. For many people on the planet, food is a given, but for more than 820 million people who are hungry, according to FAO statistics, food is not guaranteed This is why tackling food waste is one of the issues that green entrepreneurship is trying to solve, as according to recent data one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted globally, which represents about 1.3 billion tonnes per year.

In Egypt, a green initiative called Protemeal is tackling food waste by making a protein source from discarded nourishment and transforming it into animal feeding. This project, which is based in the Governorate of Kafr ash Shaykh in Egypt, is leaded by Ahmed Abd Alsalam, Cofounder of this start-up and young green innovator who left his job to be a full time entrepreneur in his own business. Instead of importing food to foreign countries and using it in animal feeding plants, Protemeal protects the environment by recovering waste from houses and markets and uses it locally.

Besides the operational part of the project, Protemeal also offers learning sessions about how to reduce waste and protect our environment. This start-up is one project trained by Alexandria Business Association, the Egyptian partner of GIMED. “The most important benefit we find at GIMED is familiarity with all the details we didn’t know existed and if we knew, we wouldn’t know how to deal with them”, says Ahmed Abd Alsalam.