CONTROLLING FOOD WASTAGEBy

Kumararani Meena Muthiah Mat. Hr. Sc. School

Adyar, Chennai

Our Team

Dhwani

Rahu

l

Ramya

Tiago

Keertha

na

Vyshnavi

Kishore

Pragathi

The change that we want to be

Our design is to understand food wastage and put the left overs to good use

The Realisation

• We waste food, and hardly think about what happens to it after it is thrown out .

• Apart from the fact that we abuse the privilege of having food to eat every day, we ruin the environment.

What we did

• A list of dishes we generally do not mind dumping in the garbage when mom is not seeing, were listed down.

• We asked our moms to list out all the ingredients that go into making the dish.

• We realized, to prepare the dish that we would hardly enjoy, took so much of effort and a whole bunch of ingredients.

The Challenge

After the discovery at home, it would be a sin to waste, but our taste buds beg to differ, well, what do

we do now?Why not put the left overs to good

use, and not feel too guilty???

To not waste food

Enough of thinking!!! Getting to

work

The Mission

We had a fair idea of how compost helps in plant growth and is a good

way of recycling.

We though of digging a big pit, but to dig up the school ground wasn't

ideal.We didn't want kids falling into “dhal” and “bitter gourd”. There

should be a better solution

The Taskforce

A bunch of newly appointed, enthusiastic volunteers set out to search the vast world wide web to

seek solutions to the problem. Another set of vibrant young minds

set out to gather information from neighbours around the school on

eating, and wasting habits

The Action plan

With data available from two sources, the new superheroes

were out to save the world from the “idlis”, “upmas”, veggie curries and all the food that

people throw away, from engulfing this world.

We had found a saviour in an object that brought them all

together in fulfilling the mission

The Redemption

Our search was not in vain. Life is simple indeed!!! The biggest truth is always the simplest of things. Our ideas crawled through pits, were fuelled by worms and after that long journey, we came out

victorious from a clay pot.

We contacted "Daily Dump"

The Implementat

ion

The First contact

We set about the task of finding who these like minded beings were and

got in touch with a wonderful person in Chennai.

She not only gave us our Khambas (Clay pots), she also gave us a trainer

who showed us what to do!

Our Battlefield

Once we got the Khambas, “our guests”, we had to feed them, and what a relief.

Our two Khambas were more than happy to eat the left overs.

Our battle was to find students who wasted food, and our battlefield, the

lunch hall

Our Strategy

It is bad to waste food. It’s even worse if you let someone do it and walk away!!!

Our volunteers would line up in the lunch hall 5 mins before the closing of lunch

and check the lunchboxes for left overs

The Execution

We made sure no one wasted food just for the sake of dumping it. The

remains that was not eaten was collected in bags

The Finishing Touch

The collected food was then dumped in the Khambas.

Is that all??? That’s no ending

Part Deux

We heard you!!Well, the story is, we are going to

keep collecting wasted food to feed the Khambas and in about 3

months, we will have our wonderful eco friendly fertilizer

“The Compost”

And then?

We will use this compost to start a veggie garden in our school, and grow

our own produce. This will then be passed onto the Canteen to prepare some yummy treats, and remember,

we have grown the food, why would we throw it???

Sustenance

We now have proof of what can be done with what is generally regarded

GARBAGE.We are going to take this concept to the

houses that we surveyed. We will collect the wasted food from their

houses and compost it in the school.

Sustenance

We will now generate more compost and hence more produce.

We can then drive home the point and get our neighbors to own a Khamba,

and start their home garden, and save a lot

Long term goals

More Khambas, less garbage, less harmMore Khambas, more organic produceMore Compost, more giving back to EarthMore home gardens, less food scarcityLess food scarcity, less inflationMore happiness to earth, more to all

Some snippets

The

meeting

Happy volunteers

The survey

The design

plan

Home Survey

Presentation at School

Khamba Installation

Thank YouWe are a generation that is often critisized by elders

for the excessive use of computers and other gadgets, but all thanks to DFC, we have something really concrete that makes us and our elders feel

proud of the present generation. We are all determined and hope we successfuly pass on the message of the value of food and prevent food

wastage.We would like to thank our school and our teachers

who have helped us in this design and most importantly, we thank DFC for giving us the

opportunity to BE the change. Thank you once again for your patience in rummaging through our GARBAGE story