"Waste Not Want Not"

That was written on the drums strategically kept on the corridors of the high school I attended in Calcutta. The Don Bosco School at Park Circus is and continues to be one of the finest in Calcutta if not in the country. I was there from grade 4 to to grade 12. I hated it then because of the academic workload (not that I studied much) but now when I think back on my experiences there, I remember the school very fondly. I do remember the missionaries there were dedicated to teaching and the development of the boys. And the teaching was well rounded with adequate opportunities for academic and extra-curricular activities, along with trying to instill a sense of social committment among the students.

One of the small ways in which they did was by setting up these drums on stands. The drums were green in color and the words "Waste Not Want Not" were written in white paint across the drums. The words were self explanatory, and often students would bring stuff from home to deposit inside the drums. There were also some morons who would throw food leftovers inside the drums. I dont recall ever having contributed to the drum either way, but I remember think that this was a nice thing to do.

I got thinking about this recently because of the amount of food that was being wasted in my household. Everyday we have some leftovers which never gets used up even after a few days in the refrigerator. And then the food gets rotten and thrown away. Let's imagine that we waste about 50 grams of all food every day. That's not a lot - less that half a tea cup. Now let's imagine about 50 million family equivalents in the US cook every day and waste that much food every day (a very likely scenario). This amounts to 2500 million grams of food every day being wasted. Or about 2.5 million Kgs of food being wasted every day. Or about 913 million kgs of food every year. With an approximate of 250kgs of food being consumed by residents of the western hemsiphere, this means we can feed another 3.2 million people in the West every year. Or about 5.1 million people in the developing world. And if the whole world wasted less food, we can probably feed 142 MILLION PEOPLE AROUND the World every day!

When I shared this with my wife, we both almost jumped. Now my wife and I have a rule that we will cook a bit less than we need every day - We hope that with this, we wont let food get wasted, and hopefully will save some energy.