Fighting climate change by minimizing food waste
Subhadip Senapati and Narayan Barman
Climate catastrophe is not a dystopic calamity from the future anymore, it is already upon us. There are some compelling and undeniable shreds of evidence for climate change seen throughout the world – the rise of average surface temperature, the rise of sea level, melting glaciers, and extreme and unusual events to mention a few.1 India is also experiencing the wrath of climate change. The unusually warm weather, a decrease in seasonal rainfall, frequent depressions and cyclones point in that direction.2 India, a country with an almost 1.4 billion population, rich with natural resources, must find ways to combat climate change to save its citizens and preserve its abundant natural resources. For us to be successful in this endeavour, we must understand the reasons behind climate change and act on it. One of the most underappreciated, yet significant causes of climate change is food waste. Almost 1/3rd of the food (vegetables, fruits, dairy, meats, etc.) being produced globally is wasted every year. Rotten food emits greenhouse gases and accounts for almost 8-10% of the total greenhouse emissions, leading to global warming and climate change.3 If food waste were a country, it would rank third in total greenhouse gas emission after China and the USA, followed by India and Russia (Figure 1).4 About 1.8 billion tons of food is wasted worldwide every year and the resources needed to produce the food that is wasted/lost have a carbon footprint of 3.3 billion tons of CO2.4
Figure 1. Level of country-wise green-house gas emission.1
Images courtesy: Subhadip Senapati and Narayan Barman
Up to 40% of the food produced in India is wasted. India wastes as much food as the United Kingdom consumes. The food waste per capita per year in India is 51 kgs.5 In a country, where millions go hungry daily, this is also a humanitarian issue and leads to a huge economic loss too. We all must take responsibility, individually and collectively, to minimize the food waste around us. To achieve this, we must spread awareness and educate kids and adults about how food waste contributes to climate change and how we can minimize it. The aim of this article is to:
a) Spread awareness regarding climate change and how food waste is contributing to it.
b) Educate students on the negative repercussions of food waste.
c) Encourage people to minimize their food waste and plan for better waste management.
Correcting the course: educating young minds
To educate young kids and students about the long-term repercussions of food waste, the following steps can be undertaken. Students are extremely impressionable and they learn a lot just by observing their parents and teachers. Hence, educating the parents and teachers is critical to achieving the final goal.
1. Awareness assessment: The first step should be assessing the present awareness regarding climate change among the students and their parents. This can be followed by another survey to understand the extent of food wastage in their homes. Surveys can be conducted with students from both rural and urban backgrounds. The outcomes of these assessments will tell us how conscious the students (and, their parents) are on the topics of climate change, food waste, and the causal effects the latter has on the former. This data will act as the platform for the critical interventions required in the next step.
2.Educating students and spreading awareness: Students should be made aware of the implications of the climate crisis and how food waste is contributing to that (through presentations, online simulations, videos, and teacher-student interaction). There can be quizzes at regular intervals to monitor their progress. Their parents will also be made aware of the negative impact food waste has on climate change. This might drive them towards minimizing food waste at home, and lead by example for their kids. An extremely useful, open-source document provided by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) could be used for this purpose.6 A brief activity at school can be conducted to make students aware of the amount of food that gets wasted in schools or homes.
2.1.Students’ activity: Food-waste audit
- Before the students have lunch at school, give each student a waste container.
- After their lunch, ask the students to put the remaining food and drink in the container (without box, bags, wrappers, etc.).
- Students can weigh their individual food waste and note it down. Later, they can throw the wasted food into a large waste container.
- Students can then weigh the total food waste and note it down. Alternatively, they can just add up the weights of individual waste and calculate the total waste.
- Once students realize how much total food they have wasted, conduct a discussion session with them. Ask the students if they can think of any potential problems associated with food waste.
- The students can conduct the same activity at regular intervals. The data could tell us if the students are becoming aware of the relevant issues and minimizing their waste.
3. Fun engaging projects: Toolkits can be provided for students from different grades to perform a few activities at home or at school. Some of these activities can utilize food waste as fertilizers, to grow vegetables, formulate cleaning products, or make air fresheners, to name a few. A few activities have been proposed in this article. Teachers can modify these activities or come up with their own activities.
3.1 Growing vegetables from waste
- This activity can be performed using the unused base or root parts of several common vegetables, such as lettuce, green onions, onions, beetroot, etc., as these are easy to avail. But several other vegetable scraps can be used as an alternative.7
- Students can take the unused parts of the vegetable (scraps) and partially submerge them in water in small glass jars. These could be the base of a lettuce, the white bottom part of the spring onion, top part of the beetroot, or onion with root. The onion and beetroot scraps should not be completely submerged to avoid rotting.
- Keep the jars of water with the vegetable scraps under the sun for 5-7 days and add water to the jars to compensate for the water loss due to evaporation.
- After a few days, roots / shoots / sprout (depending on the vegetables) will start to grow.
- After 7-10 days, plant them.
- Vegetables will continue to grow, but may take different time to do so.
- Different forms of food waste such as egg shells, used coffee grounds, used tea leaves can be added to the soil as sources of nutrients.
Figure 2. Regrowing fresh spring onion from its scraps
4. Creating reading material: For educational purposes, engaging study material(s) can be created. The content can be customized based on the students’ levels and can focus on the already available chapters from the NCERT syllabus (i.e., ‘Garbage in Garbage out’, ‘Waste Management’, ‘Pollution of Air and Water’, ‘World Climate and Climate Change’, etc.).
5. Waste management: Finally, some other alternatives to utilize food waste at home (such as compost, animal food, biogas, and other creative pathways) can be implemented as short-term projects.8-10 Creating biogas or electricity from food waste can be a little challenging in a school environment due to the nature of equipment or setups involved. However, if that is not an issue, students can participate in short-term projects to form biogas or electricity from food-waste. One simple activity based on composting has been proposed here (Figure 3).
5.1 Students’ activity: Food-waste to compost
- Students can take a suitable container for producing the compost. It can be a compost bin, a bucket, empty paint container, terracotta pot, etc., and the volume can vary depending on the amount of waste. They should make a few holes on the walls, the lid and also at the bottom of the container to facilitate aerobic composting and drainage. Alternatively, plastic garbage bags can be used.
- Fill the first layer with the ‘brown’ materials. This can be a mixture of soil, dry leaves, small pieces of newspaper, paper napkins, cocopeat, small cardboard pieces, etc.
- The next layer is crucial. This is the ‘green’ layer, where students can use food scraps (vegetable and fruit wastes) from the kitchen and transfer them on top of the brown layer. Broken pieces of egg shells can be used as well.
- Important: Do not use milk, meat, or cooked products as these can attract unwanted pests and can compromise the compost process.
- To facilitate the bacterial composting process, curd or yogurt can be added. This is an optional step that will make the process faster.
- Next, students can add another layer of ‘brown’ material containing soil, dry leaves, etc. They should add enough water so that the mixture is moist.
- Close the lid and keep the container aside for a week. After one week, students will see that the composting process has started. They can mix the layers well to facilitate aerobic decomposition.
- After one month, the compost should be ready for use.
Figure 3. Different layers of waste that will form compost material from food-waste
Potential impact
Young students are the future of any country and their awareness will bring positive change to the future of India. At the same time, increased appreciation for nature and climate could encourage adult citizens to act more responsibly. As an added advantage, both students and their parents will be able to learn from each other in a symbiotic way. By minimizing food waste, we will be able to curb greenhouse gas emissions by up to 8-10%, which is bound to leave a positive footprint in our fight against the climate crisis.11 We must realize that wasting food not only has humanitarian and economic repercussions but also environmental ones and it is high time that we acted on it.
References
- Climate Change Evidence and Causes, Update 2020, Royal Society of Chemistry
- Dash et al, Some evidence of climate change in twentieth-century India, Climatic Change,2007, 85, 299-321
- UNEP Food Waste Index Report, 2021
- Food Waste Footprint & Climate Change, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations
- Nigam et al, Food Waste Management, Amity Journal of Energy and Environmental Studies, 2017, 3 (2), 1-8
- Food waste warrior, World Wildlife Fund, Be A Food Waste Warrior | Educators Toolkits | WWF (worldwildlife.org)
- The Edible Schoolyard project, Growing Food from Food Scraps (edibleschoolyard.org)
- School Composting – Let’s Get Growing!, Cornell Waste Management Institute, School Composting – Let’s Get Growing! (cornell.edu)
- Mirmohamadsadeghi et al, Biogas production from food wastes: A review on recent developments and future perspectives, Bioresource Technology Reports, 2019, 7, 100202
- Dahunsi, Electricity generation from food wastes and spent animal beddings with nutrients recirculation in catalytic fuel cell, Scientific Reports, 2020, 10, 10735
- Broeze et al, Trade-Off Analyses of Food Loss and Waste Reduction and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Food Supply Chains, Sustainability 2023, 15(11), 8531
Subhadip Senapati is with the Prayoga Institute of Education Research, Bengaluru. He can be reached at subhadip.senapati@prayoga.org.in
Narayan Barman is a key part of the chemistry lab at Prayoga and ensures smooth operation. He can be reached at narayan.barman@prayoga.org.in
