Image source: Primary survey
New Canteen, CEPT University
One of the biggest challenges faced by India today is feeding its
1.3 billion people. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) recommends a daily intake of 2100 kilocalories/person for the urban population and 2400 kilocalories/person for the rural population. To meet that recommendation and to feed the entire population, India needs to produce 225-230 million tonnes of food per year. In 20152016, the farm output of India was 270 million tonnes which was 40 million tonnes more than what was required. This makes it clear that India produces enough food to feed its population. However, the question arises, why India is still home to the largest undernourished population in the world? Why we rank 103 out of 118 countries in the Global Hunger Index of 2018? Why more than 19 core people in the country sleep hungry every day? Lack of food supply is certainly not the case. The five stages of the food supply chain are the harvest, post-harvest, processing-packaging, distribution and consumption. A substantial amount of food is wasted at every stage of this supply chain. Along with various social, economic and political reasons; mismanagement, lack of technological advancements, lack of knowledge and skills to use available resources and behavioural habits are also to be held responsible for the food waste happening in the supply chain. 40% fruits and vegetables and 30% cereals out of the total production are lost due to inefficient supply chain management. They do not even reach consumer markets. In this paper, we will mainly look at the food waste generated at the last stage of the supply chain which is ‘consumption’. Food waste at
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any stage of the supply chain is a waste of effort and resources that were put in the previous stages. Which is why wasting food at the last stage of consumption comes with a substantial social, economic and environmental impact on the society. Hotels and restaurants, social gatherings, marriages, college and school canteens, houses, etc. are considered as part of the consumption stage in the supply chain and all of them are major sources of food waste. A considerable amount of organic waste generated by them ends up in the landfill, contributing to the birth of a whole new set of environmental and social challenges. To better understand food waste at the consumption stage and to arrive at probable solutions to the problem, we intend to highlight the wastage of food in academic institutions of the city, by taking CEPT University as a case study. OUR CAMPUS CEPT University is one of the many premier academic institutions of Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The campus is spread over 6 hectares of land situated along the University Road in Navrangpura area. It is a workplace for more than 2000 students and staff combined. For most days the campus remains open from 6 am to 12 am, and during the examination, it remains open for the entire 24 hours of the day. It is a multicultural place with a substantial number of non-locals who come here to experience a way of learning which is offered only by a limited number of universities in India. With many non-local students, there is always a high demand for food and accommodation services. To cater to the food requirements of the students and the staff, the campus has two canteens, namely the ‘New Canteen’ and the ‘Old Canteen’.
CEPT Campus Map
Image: Campus office, Data source: Primary survey
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ABOUT THE CANTEENS The Old canteen has four different counters. One is Amul parlour which serves drinks, ice-creams and various other Amul products. Second is a South Indian food counter, the third is a juice centre, and the fourth serves desserts and fast food. Among all the four counters, the South Indian food counter gets the most customers, who come here mainly for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They serve dishes like Upma, Idli-Sambar, Dosa, Uttapam and many other dishes which range from Rs.25-Rs.120. Daily around 350 - 400 people visit the South Indian food counter to have their meal. The Juice Center also gets a considerable amount of footfall followed by Amul parlour and the Fast Food counter. People visit these three counters for refreshments and snacks during their break time. “For every time of the day we have an estimation of the number of people who will come to the canteen. For breakfast and dinner, food for 150-200 people is prepared, and for lunch, we make food for 250-300 people.” -LOKESH BHAI, Canteen Supervisor
Image source: Primary survey
Dustbinds arranged for the Food Waste Calibration exercise
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The New canteen is the main canteen on the campus which serves all types of food except South Indian food, Deserts and Juices. The canteen remains open from morning 8 am to 10 pm in the night. It serves breakfast, lunch, evening snacks and dinner. When asked about the number of people who eat at the canteen, Lokesh Bhai, the canteen supervisor, replied, “For every time of the day we have an estimation of the number of people who will come to the canteen. For breakfast and dinner, food for 150-200 people is prepared, and for lunch, we make food for 250-300 people”. A full meal from the new canteen costs Rs.70 and includes Daal, Rice, One Sabzi, Roti, Papad, Salad and a glass of buttermilk. On a regular day, around 1000 meals are served daily by the old and new canteen together. HOW MUCH IS FOOD WASTE GENERATED? To understand why food is wasted and how much food is wasted, in both the canteens of CEPT University, we did a two day exercise of food waste calibration, as a part of Prameya - a student body event. The exercise was held on 3rd and 4th October 2018. The purpose of
the exercise was to make people aware about not wasting food and to make them understand the impact food waste has on the environment and society by publishing the statistics at the end of the exercise. The exercise was straightforward, for both the days we had put separate bins for food waste at both the canteens in which the people were asked to put their leftover food. We had also asked the canteen guys to maintain separate bins for unsold cooked food for these two days. Then at the end of lunchtime and dinner time, we used to weigh the waste in the bins and put the numbers on the boards which were visible to everyone who visits the canteens. Before the exercise, we had spread the word through posters, flyers, whatsapp and email about the exercise so that maximum people get to know about it.
Posters by: Aditi Rai
At the end of the exercise, 78 kilograms of food waste was generated. “My tummy was full”, “The food was too spicy”, “The food was too oily”, “The food didn’t taste good” are a few of the reasons that students gave us for their leftover food. Mahesh Kaka, one of the workers at the old canteen, further added that, “At times, when a person leave her/his plate at the table to get something from the canteen and nobody’s there looking after it, dogs climb on the table to eat the food from the plate and then the food gets wasted.” A considerable amount of food waste is generated when cooked food remains unsold. Lokesh Bhai, the new canteen supervisor, told us,
Posters spread across the campus to spread awareness redarging the food waste calibration.
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Image source: Primary survey
“We assume the number of people who will come to eat at our canteen, many times that number of people do not turn up and the food is wasted. We cannot prepare food less than what we have estimated because if it gets over, and still we have customers coming then there are chances of them getting angry at us, and we do not want that so we always prepare some extra food.” he continued “The staff also eats here, so sometimes there is nothing left but still at times the food that is left has to be thrown away.”
Board displaying the waste generation on the first day of the Food Waste Calibration exercise
By talking to the staff we found, sometimes they take the leftover food with them to their homes for their families or to give it to the people in need on their way home. There is a Dog club on campus, and their members also take the leftover rice and buttermilk in the night to feed it to the campus dogs. However even after all these efforts to avoid food waste, around 40 kgs of food is wasted every day, which becomes 1040 kgs per month (excluding Sundays) and more than 9 tonnes per year (considering only the months when the college is open). FOOD WASTE DISPOSAL SYSTEM The problem does not end at the generation of food waste. Instead, it is the start of a whole new set of challenges, because now we are required to make arrangements for safely disposing of the waste. At CEPT, the waste disposal system of the entire campus is slightly different from that of the canteens, primarily because different entities handle it. The Campus management is responsible for the waste generated outside the canteen premises whereas, for the canteen waste,
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canteen contractors themselves are responsible. In the old canteen, the South Indian food counter has provided creates where people keep their plates after eating. Mahesh Kaka, a worker at the South Indian Food counter, said, “The food waste and other waste like plates and glasses are collected separately, and a person is hired to take this waste outside the campus.” However, based on our observation, all types of waste is dumped in all the bins kept at the old canteen. There is an attempt to segregate the waste, but it is not strictly followed.
“Simply by drinking water, kids here suffer from diarrhoea, vomiting and often have to be rushed to the hospital” -SHABANA BEN resident of Faizal Nagar Image source: Primary survey
Similarly, in the new canteen, there is a washing area where people leave their plates after they are done eating. The leftover food in the plates is collected in a bin inside the canteen by the staff. Pratap, one of the staff members, stated, “The food waste that is produced before cooking, leftover food waste, as well as all the other waste that is generated within the canteen, is collected and dumped in the garbage bin provided by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on the road.” One of the canteen owners who wanted us to hide his identity, revealed, “Apart from the rent and the electricity bill we pay additional Rs.12,000 every month for maintenance, even then waste disposal is our responsibility and the campus doesn’t help us in this.” At CEPT canteens, all the waste generated ultimately ends at the nearest bins provided by the AMC. The AMC then empties the bins at the Pirana dumpsite, located on the southeastern periphery of the Ahmedabad city.
Crates kept to collect used plates at the old canteen.
“The food waste that is produced before cooking, leftover food waste, as well as all the other waste that is generated within the canteen, is collected and dumped in the garbage bin provided by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) on the road.” -PRATAP BHAI, Canteen Staff
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Graphic source: Author
Diagram showing the current cycle of the waste disposal.
LARGER IMPACTS OF THE FOOD WASTE Dumping waste at Pirana dumpsite comes with great costs. The process itself requires a lot of human resources and energy consumption. Above that, if the landfill is not scientific and just a dumpsite like Pirana, then it contributes to a variety of environmental degradation. Talking about Pirana dumpsite, it is spread over 84 acres of land which is surrounded by human settlements. Every year it consumes more than 17.5 million litres of water to manage the constant fires and rising dust particles. In general, of all the waste that is generated in India, more than 50% is an organic waste. Pirana dumpsite is no different, and samples tested here revealed high content of food waste - around 40%. Out of the total emissions from the waste sector, the solid waste contributes nearly 22 % of total greenhouse gas emission in the Indian context, which in turn is 3% of the total emissions.
“One of the things that we tend to ignore a lot is the food waste, much of which is just going into the dumping sites. A substantial amount of waste is generated within the campus every day, and the city is currently grappling with what do we do with Pirana as its constantly growing.”
Mansi Shah, professor at CEPT, says, “One of the things that we tend to ignore a lot is the food waste, much of which is just going into the dumping sites. A substantial amount of waste is generated within the campus every day, and the city is currently grappling with what do we do with Pirana as its constantly growing.” The concerns regarding the dumpsite not only ends here but further extends as it affects the health of the people working and living near the dumpsite. The gases and dust coming from the landfill pollute the air, lichet, a poisonous liquid that gets produced, percolates through the land, polluting the land as well as the groundwater aquifers, contributing to the degradation of the environment as well as public health.
-MANSI SHAH
We are talking about food waste at the consumption stage, the last stage in the food supply chain. As we discussed earlier that the food wasted in the last stage is also a waste of all the efforts and resources that were put into previous stages. Starting from the effort, hard work and patience with which the farmer has cultivated the crops,
Faculty at CEPT
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the land and water utilised for the cultivation and for the post harvesting processes, electricity utilised in the process, transportation of the processed food to the consumer markets, all of this becomes worthless if the food gets wasted at the consumption stage. Not only becomes worthless, but it also comes with a high environmental, social and economic cost to society as a whole. An average person eats 1.5 kg to 2.5 kg of food per day. The food waste generated on campus per day can feed 16 to 26 people for all three times of the day. Yearly it can feed, 100 to 170 people which is equivalent to 300 to 500 meals. However, if it ends up in Pirana, then it will release around 976 kg of CO2 in the atmosphere. This, we talked about the impact of the food waste generated by just one campus canteens. There are hundreds of such canteens in the city and thousands of them in the entire nation and the impact that they collectively create sums up to terrifying numbers.
Image source: Aryan Iyer
WHO SHOULD TAKE THE RESPONSIBILTY? The largest group of stakeholders on the campus is of the students, and their participation is very crucial for successful segregation of the waste, is what campus supervisor, Jagdish Bhai believes. Whereas some students say that because the campus management collects everything in the same bin, there is no point in having separate bins. To which campus management said that there were various initiatives taken to push the solid waste segregation, it works for a few days and again go back to how it was; they even tried segregating the waste, once all of it was collected, but that was not successful because of several complications and hygiene concerns of the people doing that job. The canteens currently dispose off the waste separately however they are willing to work with the campus if they come up with a system for them. Furthermore, the municipality bins that are provided by the government right now, do not have separate compartments for dry and wet waste, eventually mixing the waste even if it comes segregated from previous sources and all of it ends up in the pirana dumpsite.
Pirana landfill site on the south eastern peripher of the Ahmedabad city.
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WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT? Reuse and Recycle “I think CEPT has a lot of greenery, a lot of areas require good fertility and here we have a lot of students, a lot of food that comes out of the canteen, I think it’s the perfect place to create a sustainable cycle instead of letting the waste go to the landfill site.” -MANSI SHAH
Instead of simply dumping, we need to increase the sensitivity regarding the food waste. In an apartment or a small house, it might be difficult to maintain a compost pit but in the campuses like CEPT, where there is a lot of open space available, biodegradable waste like food waste can be used as a resource to make manure which in turn can help maintain the soil fertility for the vegetation in the campus. CEPT won’t require to buy humus from outside to maintain soil fertility if it figure out the value of the waste generated on campus. Mansi Shah, professor at CEPT, stated, “I think CEPT has a lot of greenery, a lot of areas require good fertility and here we have a lot of students, a lot of food that comes out of the canteen, I think it’s the perfect place to create a sustainable cycle instead of letting the waste go to the landfill site.”
Faculty at CEPT
Graphic source: Author
Recycle food waste to create circular waste management system.
Reduce the generation of waste and increase awareness If the canteens become a little more flexible with their rules like if they allow their customers to take multiple small servings instead of one full serving, a lot of waste generation can be avoided. By this way the generation of the waste itself gets reduced which makes it less of a problem to handle it. Short films and documentary screening, plays on behavioural change, awareness campaigns and other similar events can be organised to make people conscious about the
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food waste. Collaborative Effort As the students make a large part of the campus body, they should come together, organise themselves and take initiatives like segregation at source and having a compost pit within the campus. This will enable them to learn something beyond their academics and might prove helpful to them in the future as well. Simply depending on someone else to come and do the job might not help in making people conscious and responsible of their actions. In fact at CEPT we have students and faculty members from different backgrounds who are landscape architects, water conservationists, biologists and various other expertise, they could come together and share their knowledge to fix this issue with a collaborative effort. The campus management can provide students with all the necessary help to facilitate these actions. In campuses with less space, segregation at source should be strictly followed and the government must take the responsibility of recycling and processing this segregated waste instead of dumping it in a landfill. Dharmu Bhai who has a fruit juice shop in CEPT and has shops in various other institutions said, “If you go to IIT Gandhinagar, you will find an organised system where waste is segregated properly, and is then given to the campus after which they take the responsibility. This waste is recycled or reused by the campus, and whatever is left, is collected by the government in a segregated manner. Everybody coordinates with each other, and the system works efficiently.”
“If you go to IIT Gandhinagar, you will find an organised system where waste is segregated properly, and is then given to the campus after which they take the responsibility. This waste is recycled or reused by the campus, and whatever is left, is collected by the government in a segregated manner. Everybody coordinates with each other, and the system works efficiently.” -DHARMU BHAI Fruit Juice Vendor
Existing good practice There are various NGOs like The Robin Hood Army (RHA) which is a volunteer based organization that works to get surplus food from Restaurants, Parties etc. to the less fortunate sections of the society in cities across India. Campuses like CEPT can contact NGOs like RHA to reduce their food waste and to help those in need. Even now the canteen staff takes away the remaining food and give it to needy people living in the poor neighbourhood of Gulbai tekra. The Dog club also utilises the leftover rice and buttermilk to feed the dogs. A system could be designed that make optimum use of all these potentials and ensure that things happen effectively. CONCLUSION The often neglected issue of food waste has a huge environmental,
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economic and social impact. Wastage of food in academic institutions, various organisations, public functions, individual households, etc. have enormous negative impacts when cumulated. There is an urgent need to take responsibility for the waste we produce at an individual level as well as at a collective level. The waste that is generated can be a huge resource if we utilize it sensibly. Academic institutions can guide the entire city by becoming an ideal example for solid waste management. Awareness and sensitivity towards this issue needs to be inculcated amongst common people. Reducing the waste generation and reusing and recycling as much waste as possible will help us minimise the adverse impacts of the waste. Segregation at source and collaborative efforts by all stakeholders is essential to make solid waste management a success for the city.
REFERENCES Brown, S. (2014, August 20). Connections: CO2 Math For Food Waste Transport. Retrieved from https://www.biocycle.net/2013/08/01/connection-co2-math-forfood-waste-transport/. Dabhi, B. (2018, March 30). Pirana landfill worsens Ahmedabads water crisis as 48,000 litre water wasted daily to contain waste. Retrieved from https://ahmedabadmirror.indiatimes.com/ahmedabad/cover-story/pirana-landfill-worsensahmedabads-water-crisis-as-48000-litre-water-wasted-daily-to-contain-waste/ articleshow/63550693.cms. Dutta, P. K. (2017, October 16). World Food Day: Why 19 crore Indians go to bed hungry every night. Retrieved from https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/worldfood-day-19-crore-indians-go-to-bed-hungry-every-night-1065642-2017-10-16. ET Bureau. (2018, January 8). India wastes Rs 244 crore worth of food a day: Report. Retrieved from https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/personal-finance-news/india-wastes-rs-244-crore-worth-of-food-a-day-report/articleshow/62391489.cms. Hunger in India. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.indiafoodbanking.org/hunger. Seth, J., Patel, K., & Shah, D. (2016). Solid Waste Management: A Case Study of Ahmedabad. IIT,Guwahati: IJSRD. Thacker, H. (2018, February 23). Food Wastage In India - The CSR Journal. Retrieved from https://thecsrjournal.in/food-wastage-india/. What are your 4 pounds made of? How to understand calorie and energy density. (2015, June 17). Retrieved from https://www.precisionnutrition.com/what-areyour-4-lbs.
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