PETALING JAYA, March 12 — The buffet has been identified as one of the biggest contributors of Malaysia's enormous food wastage, with some 3,000 metric tonnes of edible and untouched food thrown out daily.

Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation (SWCorp) deputy chief executive officer Dr Mohd Pauze Mohamad Taha yesterday said people tend to take more than they can eat.

“The Malaysian buffet style offers many choices, 'spoiling' customers into taking more than they can eat. This is worst during the fasting month,” Mohd Pauze said.

He also said as food was widely available in many varieties, it was easy for people to take away food, and they tend to buy more when they are hungry.

He said an SWCorp waste composition study found huge amounts of cooked food leftovers disposed at landfills.

“They are in large quantites and seem edible.”

Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) president Cheah Swee Hee said most wastage came from buffet-style dishes, especially during events.

“Most organisers booked more seats (food per pax) than the actual attendance. However, as operators, we have to deliver as we promise. We have no choice,” he said.

Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (Mardi) director-general Datuk Dr Sharif Haron said on Thursday about 15,000 metric tonnes of food waste were generated daily in Malaysia.

He said out of the amount, about 3,000 metric tonnes were edible and untouched food, enough to give three decent meals to half a million people a day.

Mohd Pauze said households also waste a lot of food.

He said this was based on the proportion of food per total waste, where almost 44.5 per cent from household is food wasted.

“This is compared to 40.4 per cent of food wasted in the commercial sector (including hotels, restaurants and food courts),” he said.

He said a five-member household produces about 1.78kg of food waste daily by average, while commercial entities could produce more than 200kg of food waste daily, depending on the business.

Asked if Malaysia should follow the French government, which passed a law last month to force supermarkets to send good quality food approaching its expiry to charities, Mohd Pauze said: "We have thought about it and we are now on the move to persuade large hyper and supermarkets to donate their soon-to-expire food products to the needy rather than dispose them.

He said laws will come in if necessary but what was more important now was to educate the public.

“It is important to educate the public to value food,” he added.

Restaurant and hotel operators agreed that while Malaysians are prone to waste food, it is also a fact that the country was moving towards becoming a developed nation and have higher spending power that amplified this behaviour.

Indian Muslim Restaurant Owners Association president Noorul Hassan Saul Hameed, when contacted yesterday, agreed that Malaysians need to value food more but on the part of his members, he said they were mindful about wastage.

“It is the attitude of a glutton to overestimate how much you can eat. But it is also part and parcel of a developing nation to consume more and produce more waste.”

Noorul Hassan said the association's 3,200 operators on the other hand, were “careful” to avoid waste, especially amid the higher price of raw materials.

"We need to keep operating cost as low as possible to maintain low prices of food," he said.

Cheah said hotel operators tried to keep their cost as low as they could, including by preventing waste.

Aside from that, he said some of his 100 members also contribute their food to The Food Aid Foundation, endorsed by the association and other trade associations in the hospitality industry.