A little collaboration can stop world hunger deaths in the world.
This is the first part of a series of posts on tackling some of the serious problems we face today.
About 900 million people around the world are undernourished and almost every 3 seconds a human being dies of hunger and poverty.
This is an alarming situation. Probably hunger has taken more lives than any other disease, war or terrorism. Yet how many of us really stop to think about this problem and provide a solution.
I believe a bit of innovation, a good idea and a sound strategy can help us solve most of the big problems we face today. The following thoughts are my attempt to propose a solution to World Hunger and Poverty.
On an average, food wasted by the developed nations, surpass the food required to feed the hungry. My proposal is to direct this surplus food(food wasted) towards those who are in need of food. It just requires an initiative from some big names of different industry without actually losing anything in the process.
Case 1: Big supermarkets and Deli food stores procure foods on a daily or weekly period. When the fresh stock arrives, they replace the old ones with the fresh stock and more often than not throw away the old stock away. This is the case with most outlets as they do not have a system in place to redirect the wasted food to the hungry people. The food thrown by the stores can be used to feed the hungry people. But how?
Case 2: We have advanced so much in transportation and logistics than a letter or parcel can be delivered any where in the world the next day or at best in 2 days. Many courier companies have put a system in place where a vehicle goes on a round to collect the packages from different points, and similarly go about delivering the packages at destination. Can we not use the system already in place to solve this situation?
Case 3: Traveling from one country to another, one place to another is made easy by numerous airlines. You can reach any place of the world in less than 24 hours. Most of the logistics companies use these airlines for transportation of packages or consignments across nations, states or cities, for timely delivery. Obviously they pay based on the weight. However, how many airlines fly full capacity in passenger and cargo?
My solution to the problem of World hunger is a simple collaboration of these three different businesses, Stores, Logistics/courier and Airlines.
With advanced analytics and the use of business intelligence, one can very easily come to a point when the stores can decide 1 day in advance the amount of food going to be wasted. If food is wasted, the revenue is anyways lost and that goes into profit loss account. Once they figure out the food that might be going waste a day in advance, they need to pack these in boxes for transportation. The goods to be packed in transportation are not something which has gone bad but which still has a couple of day left to go bad and would have been thrown based on the calculations. These packages can be made ready at a specific time everyday.
The courier vehicles which come for pickup of parcels and goods will pick up these boxes free of cost as well. Why free? The pickup vehicles do have space left with them. And also they go about the pickup around the cities and street on a routine basis. Once picked up, they need to deliver this on a priority to the destination. The priority shipping is something similar to next day delivery. It might happen that they would need to use the airlines for transportation purpose. The airlines can also offer this service free of cost, as they would be using some free space left in the airplane. They would not be losing anything either in this process.
With a little collaboration and no extra cost to any of the companies, the food can be made available for many hungry people around the world. I have already stated it is not going to cost any company. On the contrary the companies would be getting benefited enormously for this initiative. How?
This kind of initiative would result in a lot of media coverage. The kind of publicity these companies would get around the world, they would not be able to get even if they spend millions of dollar in ad revenue. This would also benefit the company’s image and brand.
For example, the stores can make an image of keeping only the fresh items in stock and discarding the old stock out. This will create a positive impact. The courier companies would be showing the world how they can deliver perishable goods on time and anywhere in the world. This would benefit the courier company build a brand along with free ad coverage. The airlines would be benefited as well with the ad coverage. Most of passengers/travelers would prefer to travel their airlines to support the companies who contribute towards solving World hunger problem.
This is how a little collaboration will not only solve the problem of world hunger, it will also help the participating companies improve and build a brand and gain free advertisement.
One more point which might be worth mentioning here would be how to decide the destination of the food containers. This can be solved by the collaboration of a few organizations who are working towards reducing the problem. Once a container is received by the courier companies, a message will be send to the organization, which can prioritize and direct the container to place which requires immediate attention.
This is how a little collaboration of the big companies in the developed and developing countries can help solve the problem of world hunger and poverty. A healthy and well nourished world will do a lot of good to the world economy as well as the world as a whole.
