The busiest port in the world has found a way to sustain the food waste. The UAE Food Bank and the DP World Foundation, the charitable arm of DP World Group, have launched ‘Sustainable Goodness’. The initiative is a collaboration with Dubai Municipality, Dubai Customs and DP World.
The initiative intends to reclaim abandoned food shipments at Jebel Ali Port. With an aim of distributing the shipments to beneficiaries in compliance with food safety and health regulations, and minimize food waste.
Eng. Marwan Ahmed Bin Ghalita, Director General of Dubai Municipality and Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the UAE Food Bank, signed the cooperation agreement to activate the initiative. He was accompanied by Abdulla Bin Damithan, Chairman of the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation, and Dr. Abdulla Busenad, Director General of Dubai Customs.
Latifa Al Qamzi, Director General of the DP World Foundation, Ahmed Yousef Al Hassan, the CEO and Managing Director of DP World GCC and CEO and Managing Director of Jebel Ali Port and Shehab Mohammed Al Jasmi, Chief Commercial Officer, Ports and Terminals, DP World GCC were also present for the initiative’s agreement.
How ‘Sustainable Goodness’ Initiative Works
‘Sustainable Goodness’ is a simple but important process. As part of the initiative, the entities taking part will identify and handle food shipments that are not cleared by the customs authorities at Jebel Ali Port by their owners.
Suitable shipments will be selected for further evaluation and distributed in the UAE Food Bank’s humanitarian network. Every item must clear a health and safety check before it moves anywhere near a beneficiary. Dubai Municipality holds responsibility for that verification step.
Dr. Naseem Mohammed Rafee, Acting CEO of the Environment, Health and Safety Agency at Dubai Municipality, confirmed the municipality would provide technical and regulatory support to ensure food shipments comply with approved health and food safety requirements before being transferred to the UAE Food Bank.
The initiative also addresses a friction point for logistics companies. It will help simplify release procedures and reduce costs and processing times for companies that voluntarily relinquish ownership of eligible food shipments and donate them to the UAE Food Bank’s programmes. In other words, it creates a structured, low-barrier path for businesses to give rather than abandon.
UAE Food Bank & DP World: A Practical Model of Partnership
The ‘Sustainable Goodness’ initiative is notable not just for what it does, but for how it does it. Five institutions, spanning logistics, customs, municipal regulation, and humanitarian distribution, have structured a single operational pipeline. Each brings a distinct capability. DP World contributes port access and logistics infrastructure. Dubai Customs facilitates the legal transfer of unclaimed goods. Dubai Municipality ensures safety compliance. The UAE Food Bank handles redistribution.
Shehab Mohammed Al Jasmi, Chief Commercial Officer at DP World GCC, situated the initiative in terms of the role of the logistics sector in general. “This is a project demonstrating how government and private entities can work together to reduce food wastage, improve supply chain processes and meet the UAE’s food security and sustainable development goals,” he said.
A System-Level Approach
Latifa Al Qamzi, Director General of DP World Foundation, declared it a system-level approach. “The partnership provides a real solution that helps decrease food waste, save resources and make sure food goes to the communities who need it most,” she said.
“This initiative fills a need that is very clear,” said Manal Bin Yarouf, Head of Executive Team, UAE Food Bank Foundation. It is solving a critical problem in the food supply chain which is separating eligible food left behind from being wasted and channeling it to humanitarian uses,” she said.
Mansour Al Malik, Executive Director of the Policy and Legislation Division at Dubai Customs, said the launch demonstrates Dubai Customs’ focus on improving food security and the charitable ecosystem in the UAE.
The UAE Food Bank, a Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiative, accumulates over 908,000kg of food from landfill through campaigns and partnerships with the private sector. “Sustainable Goodness” adds a permanent, port-level infrastructure to that effort, one built not on individual donations but on a system designed to catch waste before it begins.
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