Awareness is always a good first step towards addressing any crisis. Bringing renewed attention to a volunteer-based solution to a global problem, is the purpose behind sharing this write up in this issue of Samvada.
In 2023, India ranked 111 out of 125 countries, on the ‘Global Hunger Index’. An estimated 200 million people in India are malnourished. As the fastest-growing large economy of the world, the country is also facing accelerating food-price inflation. As an implication of this, a section of the population faces hardship in consuming food of adequate nutritional value. According to the ‘State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’, a survey report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 74 percent of India’s population in 2021 could not afford a healthy diet. This percentage translates to nearly one billion people.
Juxtapose this against some other statistics, and the picture becomes even more distorted. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that India wastes 74 million tonnes of food each year. This puts the per capita food waste in India at 55 kilogramme per year. India is second only to China in the amount of food wasted globally. Globally, an estimated one-third of all the food produced in the world goes to waste. That is equal to about 1.3 billion tonnes of edibles getting wasted. This is food that could feed every undernourished person on the planet.
Wasted food is not only a humanitarian concern, but also an environmental problem. When food goes to the landfill and rots it produces methane, a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide. These gases are responsible for the drastic climate change and other challenges associated with it.
Fridging-the-Gap (F-t-G) is the name and mission statement of the ‘Community Fridge’, the very first of its kind started in Noida way back in 2017, by a volunteer group of residents of ATS Greens Village, in Sector 93A.
This September, it is 7 years since the F-t-G group first came together. The initiative is already recognised to be a soundly sustained example of a voluntary ‘Community Fridge’, managed by residents at a residential address. This holds good, not only in Noida or the NCR, but also in the country.
Earlier this summer, after some brainstorming and pooling of resources, a new lease of life was given to the initiative by replacing the aged visicooler with a brand new one. The new fridge was plugged in and started serving packed meals from 2nd June onwards — symbolically, ‘‘दो जून की रोटी’’ is a Hindi idiom which acknowledges the hardships faced by the underprivileged in attaining even two square meals a day.
Volunteers and residents continue to follow a day/week roster to serve cooked meals and pre-packed healthy treats. True to its core purpose, the fridge remains accessible 24×7 to anyone from among the resident community who can transfer good-to-eat food from their home kitchens to the F-t-G shelves. This is food which is not eaten same day, is otherwise put away in our home fridges, often forgotten there, and then sadly binned.
Co-residents not too familiar with the working of the community fridge sometimes express surprise/disappointment on finding the fridge shelves empty. Their observations invoke mixed feelings among regular contributors. On one hand, emptied shelves give satisfying confirmation that packed boxes kept close to meal times get timely takers. On the other hand, the empty shelves help underscore the point that the effort being made by some, is only a drop in the ocean. A community fridge invites, and thrives upon, open-hearted commitment from a community of people. ¨
