Blagoja Mukanov, representative and consultant from Green Growth Platform (GGP), has held the first online webinar for the project Ploutos on 21.01.2021. This meeting was held online through the Microsoft Teams platform.
At the start of the meeting, there was a short introduction of the participants, companies from agri-food industry and humanitarian organisations involved in the process of donating food, and of the management for project Ploutos – Sustainable Innovation Pilot 9 in Serbia and N.Macedonia, represented by Blagoja Mukanov from GGP (N.Macedonia) and Nikola Terzin, from Foodscalehub(Serbia).
The main aim of the meeting was presentation of the project “Plutos” and the implementation of the project through 11 Sustainable Innovative Pilots. Each pilot focuses on a specific segment of the value chain in agriculture, food production and distribution.
During the presentation the main focus was on the Pilot 9 objective which is creating a digital platform for quality exchange of information on donation opportunities, where on one side are the food donors and the Green Development Platform as coordinators of the platform, and on the other side are the users of the donated food (eg. public kitchens, Red Cross, SOS Children’s Village and other humanitarian organizations). Another important segment is that this refers not only about food that is still suitable for consumption, but also about food that can be processed for other needs (eg. fertilizer).
The main conclusions of the presentation were regarding the large amounts of food waste that is thrown away on an annual level in N.Macedonia, and how by using the platform that process could be optimized. This will have positive impact on the environment by reducing pollution due to reduced amount of destroyed food and increased use of natural fertilizers. The project will also have economic benefits by increasing efficiency along the entire value chain of the agri-food ecosystem and most importantly social contribution by increasing the number of food donations for vulnerable groups of citizens.
At the end of the meeting, conclusions and summary were presented.