Defining Food Waste for Sustainable Food Systems

The amount of food wasted in Indian households every year could feed almost another 377 million people. With an average of 55 kg food waste generated per capita annually by households, as estimated by the Food Waste Index Report 2024, the total food waste generated in India amounts to a staggering 78.2 million tonnes. This amount of food waste, if prevented, can fulfill approximately 26.5% of the total per person annual staple food requirement in the country, that is 207.5 kg per capita per year. Preventing food waste can help improve food and nutrition security for people, a challenge that is intensifying as our population expands. At the same time, reducing food waste offers benefits such as curbing greenhouse gas emissions and easing the food production pressure on our natural ecosystems.

Reducing food waste is a multifaceted challenge that requires a thorough understanding of its various aspects. It is necessary to find out not only how much food is wasted and by whom, but also where food is being wasted and why. Addressing these questions and building a comprehensive understanding is one of the first steps towards minimizing food waste generation, as emphasized in India’s T20 policy brief on reducing food loss and waste.

Defining Food Waste

A recent review paper, Definition of Food Consumption, Loss, and Waste published in 2024 addresses the importance of having a uniform definition of food waste to advance the agenda for research, policies and practices. Without a clear and consistent definition of food waste, measuring the quantity of food waste becomes difficult, making it extremely challenging to develop strategies and actions for reducing food waste effectively. It complicates food waste measurement, adding inconsistencies in monitoring and reporting. It also increases the difficulty of policy development and awareness generation.

Food waste encompasses both edible and inedible parts of food, including vegetable and fruit peelings, eggshells, discarded vegetables and fruits, leftover food, discarded food, tea leaves, unusable baked items, bones, etc. The issue of food waste is relatively new, borne out of changes in India’s traditional systems of food consumption. The primary sources of food waste generation are households, food services and retail outlets. Food services encompass a variety of sub-categories, including restaurants, hotels, healthcare facilities, educational institutions and staff catering. Retail outlets include grocery stores, supermarkets, fresh produce farmers market and wholesale distributors that directly provide food to consumers.

While India has policies to address organic wet waste management that encourage citizen involvement and promote sustainable practices to reduce landfill burdens, policies focusing on reducing food waste itself are non-existent. India needs to develop a uniform and clear definition of various sources and categories of food waste to better assess the scale of the problem and create relevant policies.

The Need for Robust Data

The Food Waste Index Report 2024 that estimates global food waste, based its estimate for India on seven sub-national studies conducted during 2014-2018. However, the sample size for these studies was small, with varying durations, raising questions about the accuracy of these estimates. Since the data available is also not uniform and the methodology used for food waste estimation differs across these studies, the actual food waste happening at various levels or in different regions could be higher or lower than these estimates.

A major gap in the Indian context is the availability of food waste data. While the data for households is limited and fragmented, it is lacking for food services and retail outlets. This emphasizes the need to develop a standard method of defining, measuring and monitoring food waste comprehensively at the subnational and national levels. Such a standard will help provide strong evidence to guide a national strategy for food waste prevention and reduction.

To tackle this complex challenge with effective strategies, we need to define food waste, develop systems to measure it and mobilize collective action by different stakeholders. This needs to be done at the level of both the retailers and the consumers, with a Target-Measure-Act approach. Friends of Champions 12.3 network in India offers an instance of exactly such an approach which involves setting specific goals to reduce food waste, measuring food waste generation and taking collaborative actions. Tracking food waste generation systematically, from cooking to consumption and leftovers, is a key step that can help identify the hotspots for food waste, optimize food usage and redistribution of surplus food, therefore contributing to an overall sustainable food system for India. By envisioning a zero-food waste future, we can not only mitigate environmental implications and economic losses, but also significantly strengthen equitable access to food and nutrition security for all.