Food worth ₹1.55 lakh crore wasted annually

Each year, on March 30, the satellite marks the International Day of Zero Waste. This year, the theme is nutrient waste, which is not only timely but besides an exigency telephone for planetary attraction to 1 of the astir achy contradictions of our time: mountains of nutrient going discarded adjacent arsenic millions spell to furniture bare and malnutrition prevails crossed the globe. In India, the nutrient being wasted is the nutrient of the farmer who rises earlier dawn to thin to the crop and the hard work of the worker who could not adjacent spend to devour good but carries the produce from the workplace gross to the market. 

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report 2024 finds that the satellite wasted 1.05 billion tonnes of food – inadequate post-harvest storage capacities and households accounting for 60% of it, food services 28%, and retail 12%. Beyond individual behaviour, the standard of nutrient loss reflects systemic inefficiencies embedded successful proviso chains, argumentation failures, and depletion cultures that have normalised discarding nutrient arsenic an acceptable outgo of abundance.