Gobar Times Magazine (Environment for Kids Monthly) - Centre for Science and Environment

Gobar times: Environment for Beginners

C O V E R S T O R Y

Eat up

The volume of such throw-aways can hardly be sniffed at. According to a study conducted by the University of Arizona, US, supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores in the US alone dish out 27 million tonnes of waste foodstuff, worth a gut-wrenching US $30 billion.

Filmy fare

We Feed the World, a documentary on wasted foodstuff, draws the viewers’ attention to such startling facts. Here are some:

For instance, the amount of unsold bread in Vienna, which is simply thrown, is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz.
And the United Nation’s World Food Programme reports that the total food surplus of the US alone can satisfy "every empty stomach" in Africa.
France's leftovers can feed the Democratic Republic of Congo, while Italy's can revive Ethiopia's undernourished.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), too, conceded that more than quarter of its food is dumped annually. If just five percent of American food scraps were recovered it would be enough to feed 4 million people for one full day.

But instead, it is the pile of garbage that grows.

Do we bite off more than we can chew?

Wasting food comes naturally to some one who has always been served more than she can consume. Ashok Ghai, manager of a fast food chain outlet in an up market mall says, “We keep our ingredients ready and prepare only ‘on order’. This way we can keep cooked food waste to a minimum.

But what can we do with the food customers leave on their plates? We can’t help the mountains of remains inside our garbage bags.”

To counter this problem, some restaurants now offer smaller portions at a discounted rate. The ‘Right price, Right portion’ menu allows customers to choose the amount they can consume. This way they can get a cheaper meal and eat exactly as much they want to.

Gross Garbage

Garbage is the waste generated from our kitchen. It consists of food material only, as compared to trash-- which is waste from stuff other than food. India produces 42.0 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually.30-55 per cent of this is garbage.

Out of this:

Total quantity of solid waste in six mega cities of India is 21,100 tonnes per day (TPD)
Waste generated in metros (with more than 1 million population) - 19,643 TPD
Waste generated in towns (with more than 0.1 million population) - 42,635.28 TPD
Per capita generation of waste is in the range of 200 gm to 600 gm per day.

About 94 per cent of this is dumped in landfills, while about five per cent is composted.

Are you an active contributor to the avoidable asset of garbage or not? Answer the questions listed here and find out.

When you dine out, and there is extra food on the table, do you get it packed for home?

Never. It is so embarrassing.
Not when I am with my boss, or girlfriend/ boyfriend. I?want to make a good impression. Otherwise, yes.
Yes always. After all I have paid for it
Yes. And usually give it to beggars I come across on my way back.

When a vegetable that you don’t like, is cooked at home for dinner, and the leftovers land up in the refrigerator, what you do with it?

Throw it in the bin. ‘Have I ever eaten it? Why was it made in the first place?!.’
Have not thought about it. Guess I will have to throw it, or it will rot..
Feed it to the cows and dogs on the street.
Make a fresh dish out of it in the morning

When you are organising a party and serving a buffet dinner, what do you do with the surplus food?

It is not our liability, but the caterers mistake. He does whatever he wants with it.
Throw it in the dustbin.
Request close friends and family members to take some home
Distribute among the poor and needy.

If your answers are mostly option 1 and 2, tell us your address, for your bin must be a feast for dumpster divers. And if your answers are mostly 3 and 4, we would still like to cross check with Mr Bin, for he never lies.

Not that we think you do, but a similar study done in garbology advises us to crosscheck. The Tucson Garbage project, reveals that what people voluntarily say in a survey does not match with what their bins contain. Dr. William Rathje, Professor, University of Arizona, once set out with his students to examine such patterns They found that like alcohol consumption, food wastage was many times more than what an individual admits to.

I compost. So can I throw?

Food waste is bio-degradable and non toxic, so what’s the problem?

Well, the problem is that we can’t throw. Cooked food, cannot be composted. Only uncooked vegetable peels, tea bags, coffee bags and garden waste are fit for that. Cooked food can only rot. And while rotting, emit a gas called methane. And did you know that methane is a potent green house gas that contributes significantly to global warming?

Globally, methane emissions from landfills are estimated to be between 30 and 70 million tonnes each year. Landfill gas is by composition 40-60 per cent methane and the rest consists primarily of carbon di oxide. The UK-based Waste and Resources Action Program (WRAP) says that if we stop throwing out edible food, the impact it would have on CO₂ emission levels would be equivalent to that of taking one in five cars off the road.

Previous page

1 2 3