Most of us have wasted food at one point or the other, knowingly or unknowingly. You might have taken a lot on your plate than you could consume and then the leftover ended up in trash. Out of love, you served a few bites more than your child could finish and then they left it. Some greens have been in the fridge for too long and before you could use them, they got spoiled.
You might think that we throw away food occasionally and the quantity is too less, but do you know, there is a significant amount of food waste generated in our homes. According to Food Waste Index Report 2021, around 50 kg of food is thrown away per person every year in Indian homes. Shocking right!! This has been an ongoing problem for decades which is just increasing with time. It was only when Covid-19 pandemic hit us that we understood the importance of it all when during the lockdown procuring vegetables and groceries got difficult.
Getting food to your plate is also a lengthy process. Food is grown, processed, packaged, transported, marketed and finally sold. Food also gets wasted during this process. For example, some pests attack the crop or the crop is damaged during transport or it gets spoiled sitting on the aisle at the supermarket because nobody bought it. All that gets dumped too. During the lockdown phase, farmers lost most of its crop to dump as they were not able to bring it to the market.
What happens to all this food that is being spoiled or wasted? All that goes into landfills and rots. As it rots, it produces a greenhouse gas called methane. Greenhouse gases are present in the Earth’s atmosphere. When sunlight hits the Earth surface, it reflects back into space but some of it turns into heat and is supposed to reflect back as well. Greenhouse gases like water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, prevent the heat from escaping into space and thus warming the planet thus affecting our climate.
Food wastage also heavily contributes to emission of greenhouse gases and each one of us who has thrown away even a spoonful of leftover food or let a vegetable/fruit spoil away in the refrigerator is responsible for it. Meat and dairy products have much higher emissions than fruits and vegetables. We tend to take our food for granted and that needs to change.
We need to curb the greenhouse gases emission and reducing food wastage is the easy fix that can de done right away in our homes.
1.Buy the food you need just for 2-3 days so they don’t spoil and we throw away less.
2. A little imperfection in appearance of fruits should also be accepted so that it does get spoiled away with the seller itself and get thrown away. Consider making smoothies or jams with them. Use them in your baking or blending dishes.
3. Make sure to store all the food products in a proper way in the refrigerators and air-tight containers so they stay fresh for longer and are not rotten and eventually dumped. Make proper use of the freezer section to store meat products to increase at their shelf life.
4. The peels, shoots and roots of fruits and vegetables can be composted for your home garden. It makes a great DIY project for adults and a wonderful way of learning for kids.
5. Another way of using roots and shoots is to make vegetable broth out of it or use them in the main dish itself. For example, gobhi danthal sabzi from Punjab uses cauliflower stalks and Bengali ucche pata bora are bhajjias/fritters made out of bitter gourd leaves.
6. Instead of planning a delicacy out of the blue, it is always better to plan in advance and make meals with ingredients already available in your refrigerator. Planning meals for a few days or a week also helps a lot.
7. Portion control. Take one serving of food that you are sure to finish. Go for a second serving if needed. Make sure to do that with your kids as well.
8. Leftovers should not be thrown away. Use the leftover vegetable to make cutlets or parathas. Dal paratha also tastes really well. Leftover rotis/chapatis make an excellent rolls with just an addition of egg and some flavoring sauces.
9. The food scraps that cannot be eaten can be fed to animals nearby.
10. If going to restaurants, make sure to take-away the leftovers and either bring them home or give it away to the needy and make sure they don’t sleep another night on an empty stomach. Great of you could add in another dish onto it and not just leftovers.
11. Talk to the community around you and share the knowledge. Awareness is the first big step!
Take small steps like these and you will make a difference. Small changes will yield big results with time.
This post is part of Blogchatter’s campaign CauseAChatter.
My World with Eira 
We can only bring change and save our planet, I agree with you that our small step can help a lot!! Loved the article!!
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I compete agree with you. The point you have mentioned about using slightly expired fruits into smoothies. It happens mostly with banana.
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this is a very insightful and much needed post, it is high time we need to make the most of available resource. I prefer to use the roots, peels for composite . Food waste should be reduced
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All these are wonderful ideas Seema. I agree it is very important to raise awareness about this topic. with little effort from our side, we can make a big change in future.
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This is so important to know. I used to buy only what I needed, but in current times, we are buying in bulk for 2 weeks to reduce going out!
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I agree absolutely with you, Seems. I hate food wastage and try my best to keep it to the minimum.People just don’t blink twice while throwing away food.
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The waste food ends up in landfills and rot , emitting harmful gases. Little efforts from our end to prevent food wastage can check the menace of environmental pollution
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This is something most of us are very much aware , wasting food can actually harm the climate but inspite of that people still waste food sometimrd knowingly and Sometimes unknowingly. Aa a responsible citizen we should be more concisous and help mother earth by not polluting our environment.
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I am a sustainable practices evangelist and already following minimal food wastage. This is one of the best ways we can care for nature and other animals too plus limit the emission of harmful gases.
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Taking the leftovers from restaurants is an important point that you mentioned. People would feel shameful to do this but in fact it is a novel gesture and awareness is needed around this.
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Food wastage is a very big problem and needs to be addressed wisely. Liked your suggestions in the post even I follow many solutions and make sure there is no food wastage.
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I loved your doable tips dear and promise yo incorporate the ones I haven’t yet it’s on us to be the face of positive change
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What a wonderful post Seema. I completely agree that if we take small steps towards what we are consuming, we can leave a wonderful world for children. And the tips that you have shared ensures that we inculcate these little changes in our life
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Superb post Seema. The planet is what we are leaving behind for our future generations so let’s keep it good for their sake. I also make sure there is no food wastage at my house and we buy what we need.
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A well written and pertinent post. People need to really be aware of this issue and work on it- every single day, and not just once in a while.these suggestions will go a long way in bringing that change
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I really adore your pointers here. So thoughtful and practical. We should be careful towards this.
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Portion control is something that we missed most of the time, I am glad you have mentioned in this post. this small step can save lots of food and in long term, it can offer great benefits.
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Very well-written post! We’ve always been taught to avoid good wastage and your post reminds us why. Every step counts and we must be responsible in buying and consuming only what we need.
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It takes months to produce food organically and moments to finish or throw it away ! Making sure we save food wastage and recycle it is surely a way to ease climate change.
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A good to go post even I don’t like wasting food the restaurant idea is really worth this is a great initiative thank you for sharing.
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I am someone who vehemently opposes food wastage. When crores of people are hungry, we can’t have to luxury of wasting food. Ecosystem imbalance is another factor.loved your post
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This is a much-needed post and unknowingly we all contribute to food waste. And I am happy you have shared such suggestions to stop the food wastage and try to help mother earth in the longer run.
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You choose a very good topic to talk about. This definitely needs awareness and all your suggestions are great and doable. I also make parathas with leftover and buy as I need, never store food for long.
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Thanks for this awareness post. Many of us know these things but we tend to forget to practice this in our daily lives. Such posts are needed regularly for a quick reminder.
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Very well put! We are also taking baby steps and trying to change our mind set for our future generations and save d planet.
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Climate change is an important topic that needs to be addressed. Done a fantastic job. Great information.
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This is a very informative post and a topic less talked about in the context of climate change. Thanks for the useful tips.
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This is such an important discussion to have… not a lot of people understand how food wastage affects others.
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