FOOD WITH SUSTAINABILITY

Striving to reach a zero-waste end goal

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We’ve all been in a situation where we went out to eat at a restaurant and we ordered a couple of dishes but by the time we reach that last piece of pizza or those last few fries we’re simply too full to eat and so we just leave it on our plates and walk away. Ever wondered what happens to that food? Sadly most of it is simply thrown away. Indian restaurants contribute largely to food wastage in India, which amounts to about 40% of what is produced.

In a country with as diverse a food culture as India, food wastage is a major concern that plagues us. What is interesting to note is that while restaurants do contribute majorly to food wastage, the Food Waste Index Report of 2021 from the United Nations Environment Programme and partner organization WRAP states that household food waste in India is about 68.7 million tonnes a year, which amounts to a staggering 50kg of food that is thrown away per person every year in Indian homes. This is an alarming statistic in a country where nearly 190 million people sleep hungry every night.

Fragmented food systems and inefficient supply chains lead to nearly 40% of the food produced in India to be wasted. And this is not a recent phenomenon but has been a problem for decades now with little to no solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the problems on food waste with surplus stocks of grain rotting in godowns across India on one hand, while on the other hand the poor found it harder to access food during the lockdown. Instinctive hoarding by the middle class aggravated the situation further.

We as a nation have to do better in order to stop this wastage, especially when we have such a large section of the population which still does not have access to 3 full meals every day. Food must be coupled with sustainability. We must adopt better habits and incorporate planned production techniques to avoid food wastage and where possible, find ways to reuse the waste so that it simply does not end up in landfills. We have to be judicious in how we consume food, be it while buying groceries for home or ordering at a restaurant. The aim should be to work towards a zero-waste end goal. Incorporating nose-to-tail cooking when it comes to meat and root-to-shoot philosophy while cooking vegetables are good steps that one can take to reduce food wastage at home.

Food with sustainability is a beautiful concept that we even learn from the Bible. When we read the passage where Jesus fed the 5000, we see something beautiful happen right at the end. After everyone had eaten to their fill, Jesus said to his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.”(John 6:12) This must be our goal too, to make sure that nothing is lost, to reach a zero-waste end goal. The first step towards reaching this goal must be at our homes and in adopting better practices with respect to food consumption. Along with this, our restaurants need to adopt efficient waste management techniques such as composting, turning waste food into animal feed, and food donation.

JS Amey BioTec is one such initiative that works towards management of food waste. The simple process works with a consortium of bacteria that can consume food waste and produce methane. This methane is then harnessed and cleaned after which it can be used as fuel. Even manure is produced out of this process that is given to farmers at a subsidized rate. Such initiatives need to be adopted on a larger scale so that we can manage our food better, from production to consumption, and reduce wastage. We can and must reuse our left over food in a more efficient way.