Check this. If all the food that was wasted at the consumer level in 2019 - 931 million tonnes to be precise - were packed into 40-tonne trucks parked bumper-to-bumper against each other, the line would be long enough to encircle the Earth seven times around. That’s one of the many shocking revelations made in The Food Waste Index Report 2021, recently released by the United Nations Environment Programme. The report also says that 121 kg of food is wasted per person each year, of which 74 per cent is disposed of by households. This, when the world has 690 million people reeling from hunger, a number that will only rise due to the pandemic. So, what can we do to ensure that we are part of the solution, and not the problem? Four city chefs have the answers to how we can reduce the waste we produce in our kitchens.

Of the 121 kg of food thrown away each year for every person, more than half is disposed of by households