Solution for food loss

The SIG Way Beyond Good Foun­da­tion has launched its flag­ship Car­tons for Good project in Bangladesh. Car­tons for Good applies SIG’s tech­nol­o­gy to empow­er com­mu­ni­ties to reduce food loss, sup­port farm­ers’ liveli­hoods and pro­mote children’s nutri­tion and edu­ca­tion. The project will pro­vide healthy school meals for under­priv­i­leged chil­dren in part­ner­ship with lead­ing devel­op­ment NGO, BRAC.

Estab­lished in 2018, the SIG Way Beyond Good Foun­da­tion envi­sions a future in which good nutri­tion and clean water will be avail­able to every­one and nat­ur­al habi­tats will be pre­served for future gen­er­a­tions. Car­tons for Good is the foundation’s flag­ship project.

Turning food loss into nutritious school meals

Almost 20% of the pop­u­la­tion in Bangladesh suf­fers from mal­nu­tri­tion and almost half the chil­dren are under­weight. At the same time, food is going to waste because each har­vest pro­duces more than farm­ers can sell local­ly and they have no way of pre­serv­ing sur­plus crops.

SIG set out to use its exper­tise as a lead­ing sys­tems and solu­tions provider for asep­tic pack­ag­ing to cre­ate an inno­v­a­tive mobile fill­ing solu­tion that com­mu­ni­ties can use to turn this food loss into nutri­tious meals that are pre­served in SIG car­tons for lat­er use.

Rolf Stan­gl, Chair­man of the Board of Trustees of the SIG Way Beyond Good Foun­da­tion and CEO of SIG said: “Our Car­tons for Good project is a per­fect exam­ple of turn­ing a big dream into real­i­ty. This is a true inno­va­tion out­side our tra­di­tion­al core busi­ness, but per­fect­ly in line with SIG’s pur­pose of bring­ing nutri­tious food prod­ucts to con­sumers around the world in a safe, sus­tain­able and afford­able way.”

The pack­aged food is dis­trib­uted to BRAC’s schools to pro­vide nutri­tious meals for under­priv­i­leged chil­dren. Named the world’s #1 NGO four years in a row, the SIG Way Beyond Good Foundation’s project part­ner BRAC brings valu­able exper­tise and insights into local devel­op­ment chal­lenges, help­ing to enhance the impact of Car­tons for Good.

Moham­mad Anisur Rah­man, Direc­tor Dairy and Food at BRAC, said: “We run schools for under­priv­i­leged chil­dren across the coun­try. Often, they can­not afford to pay for their edu­ca­tion or even for food. Most of them drop out of school because they need to go out and work to buy food for them­selves and for their fam­i­lies. Giv­ing them meals at school means that not only will they learn, they will also have some­thing to eat. BRAC is hap­py to be part­ner­ing with the SIG Way Beyond Good Foun­da­tion and we will work togeth­er to make this project suc­cess­ful on the ground.”

From concept to reality

In just two years, the SIG Way Beyond Good Foun­da­tion has turned a bold idea into a prac­ti­cal solu­tion to help com­mu­ni­ties pre­vent food loss and malnutrition.

SIG’s expert engi­neers adapt­ed the company’s proven fill­ing tech­nol­o­gy to cre­ate a mobile unit where meals can be cooked using local recipes and pre­served in long-life car­tons. Housed in a ship­ping con­tain­er on a trail­er, the unit is designed to trav­el from one com­mu­ni­ty to the next to pre­serve sur­plus­es at har­vest time. The ini­tial pilot is in the region of Balia.

Farm­ers are paid for their pro­duce, pro­vid­ing them with much-need­ed income, and the packs of food are used by local schools to pro­vide a healthy, hot meal for chil­dren every day.

The first meals cre­at­ed in this unique mobile fill­ing unit are already being dis­trib­uted to BRAC schools in impov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties in Dha­ka, where many chil­dren drop out of school because they need to work to feed them­selves and their fam­i­lies. After use, the emp­ty car­tons will be recy­cled at a local facility.

Car­tons for Good is part of SIG’s com­mit­ment to go Way Beyond Good by con­tribut­ing more to soci­ety and the envi­ron­ment than it takes out. Devel­op­ing this flag­ship project is a key focus of the SIG Way Beyond Good Foundation.