Amidst a scenario where more than 20% of the country – that’s about 25 crore people – lives below the poverty line and goes to sleep hungry every night, can one afford to waste food? Absolutely not.
While one may argue that the wasted food is prepared already, the fact is if people started serving themselves as much as they needed to eat, over a period of time, we can make a substantial dent in the amount of food that’s wasted.
And that’s what TCS, Infosys, Google and many other top companies would like to promote at their campuses. Most of these companies provide meals to the employees and naturally as at homes and restaurants, food is wasted in these office campuses.
But these companies are taking charge and with simple, but effective messages, looking to encourage minimal food wastage.
This is the board IT giant TCS has put up at its campuses in the cafeteria.
The board clocks the amount of food wasted every day, apart from an estimate on how many hungry mouths it could feed.
“The board is really hard hitting. It makes you feel guilty about wasting food, and that’s a good thing. We should be ashamed of wasting food when people are dying of hunger.” says a TCS employee.
However, some people are of the opinion that even boards like these barely help. “This all all corporate jargon. We have this board at Wipro and yet many are ignorant, and the wastage continues. Food is sometimes taken for granted, we need to feel reverence towards the food we eat, may be some difference”, says Arun B Kumar, a Wipro employee.
Google, which is well known for its lavish and free meals at its campuses faces the grave issue of food wastage even more. However the company goes one level ahead and has a board that shows the daily breakup of food wastage with a weekly comparison. The board is put up right where the leftover food trash can is.
Similarly Infosys follows this model and has multiple version of this on its campus.
Sure enough, if every company that irrespective of whether it provides meals at its campus or not, can have similar messaging in the cafeteria, the problem of food wastage could be called out at large, and what starts in an office, can become a national habit