Think - Eat - Save : Simple Tips on the eve of World Environment Day

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) World Environment Day (WED) is celebrated globally towards creating positive environmental actions, involving people from all walks of life to come together to ensure a cleaner, greener and brighter outlook for themselves and for the future generations. WED is celebrated every year on June 5.

The theme for this year’s celebrations is Think. Eat. Save, an anti-food waste and food loss campaign. The campaign aims to encourage reduce food wastage.

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is getting wasted. The vast amount of food going to the landfills amount to a major squandering of resources, including water, land, energy, labour, capital. In addition, it needlessly produces greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming and climate changes. It is also estimated that 1 out of every 7 people in the world go to bed hungry and more than 20,000 children under the age of 5 die daily from hunger! 

This World Environment Day, team members are invited to join the cause to prevent food wastage. In our everyday lives, we too are wasting food in some way or the other either at our homes, at restaurants or in the office cafeterias.  It is estimated that over 250 kgs of food is getting wasted  in our cafeterias daily because team members take extra food but do not consume it!

Here are a few simple tips that could help reduce food wastage at our homes, at restaurants or in the office cafeterias:

·         When at home, look in your kitchen cupboards, fridge and freezer. A lot of food wastage can be reduced by knowing what provisions you already have and need to be used up before you shop next for the provisions

·         Where and how we store the provisions we buy makes a big difference to how long they last and how much gets wasted. Use the provisions with the closest expiry date for cooking first and store safely the others that can be used later

·         While serving food and eating, either breakfast, lunch, snacks or dinner, be it at home, at a restaurant or in the office, please ensure that you take only what you can eat and do not waste food. Take only what is needed and never over-fill your plates resulting in wastage.

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      Often people throw food, if they dont taste nice. Instead think once about the people who are starving days long for getting few bread crumbs or a glass of water. If we care enough then for sure the day will come when there wont be scarcity for either food or for water.

·         You could look for local organizations that collect prepared food from homes, restaurants, caterers and corporate cafeterias and promptly distribute to the hungry people in the communities.

      Any other ideas are heartily invited via comments. 

Let us feed the hungry, not the landfills.