Food worth ₹1.55 lakh crore wasted annually

Each year, on March 30, the world marks the International Day of Zero Waste. This year, the theme is food waste, which is not only timely but also an emergency call for global attention to one of the most painful contradictions of our time: mountains of food going waste even as millions go to bed hungry and malnutrition prevails across the globe. In India, the food being wasted is the produce of the farmer who rises before dawn to tend to the crop and the hard work of the worker who could not even afford to eat well but carries the produce from the farm gate to the market. 

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Food Waste Index Report 2024 finds that the world 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 scale of food loss reflects systemic inefficiencies embedded in supply chains, policy failures, and consumption cultures that have normalised discarding food as an acceptable cost of abundance.