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Don’t Waste Food Campaign: 1

Post author By Amrit
Post date March 16, 2007
20 Comments on Don’t Waste Food Campaign: 1

Some of the guys-who-rule-insti had been asking me to make a poster. A poster with a message. Yeah and the message of course was to stop food wastage.

We, the students of IIT Madras dine in a huge mess. It used to be called Giga mess before they renamed it Himalaya! The name suits the structure.

Most of us waste food. We don’t care. Will a poster really help? I am not sure. But nothing wrong in giving it a shot. Some of you reading this blog might actually come up with some idea for a poster. Do share them with me. But keep this in mind that the posters will be be put up in the various halls of the mess. The food in mess is anyways not too great. So it wont be a great idea to put up a frightening poster which scares away guys from even eating properly.

Let me share with you a work in progress. Let’s see if we can together come up with something good.

20 replies on “Don’t Waste Food Campaign: 1”

Nice campaign you have started..at least i am trying not to waste food from now on..
Good work 🙂

Thanks Adarsh!

Yeah, it would be great if all of us can make it a point to avoid wasting food!

I really like the posters! Have you put them up in the mess? If so, do you think they have limited students wasting food?

I run a site called WastedFood.com. I’m going to write a post about your efforts. Can I use one of your posters to illustrate the post (in addition to linking to your site)?
Thanks and keep up the good work.

Thanks Jon for the appreciation. No, for some reasons the posters never came up. But feel free to use them anywhere you want to. All the best! 🙂

[…] Madras). In an effort to curb food waste, he made some posters to put up in the dining hall. He sums it up well on his blog: Most of us waste food. We don’t care. Will a poster really help? I am not sure. But […]

That poster doesn’t make sense. Whether the food is eaten or not, it’s not getting sent to a starving African child. Next time I can’t finish something, am I supposed to mail it to Africa? I guess I could, but I’m sure it’d be rotten by the time it got there, which would get the kid sick and they wouldn’t be able to afford proper medical treatment for it.

No, food shouldn’t be wasted. Yes, there are people less fortunate, and I do feel bad for them. But the amount someone eats isn’t going to affect that starving kid in another country. ‘Cause he’s not getting it either way.

And “eat until you are full” crap? In school cafeterias, a certain amount of food is made, and if the students don’t eat it, it’s throw out. You don’t just order anything you want. The same amount is made whether everyone eats it or not. So, I’m not supposed to appreciate the food I’m given, but not eat it all? I have to stay hungry? I have to let the food that’s made whether I eat it or not go to waste? It’s better to eat some of the food that’s made rather than letting all of it go to waste.

Your heart is in the right place, but if you want people to take you more seriously, you need to make sense. If you’re REALLY concerned about helping these people, you actually donate food and money to them, not complain that some people throw some food away.

Do you mind if I borrow your posters and use in our mess in IIT Kanpur?

–Hari

You are welcome to do that Hari.

Point well taken. Thanks.

can i borrow your poster to use it in my mess?

Please go ahead and use them.

You couldn’t be farther from the truth – If less food is wasted, less food is bought, and before long, less food is produced in response.

That means less land cleared, less fertiliser bought (and produced…), less employment on farms, less packaging used, less fuel used to transport that food, this list of shit could go on for hundreds and hundreds of pages —– that is, less MONEY is spent on food that will be thrown away. That is basic economics.

All of those rescources could be better spent on other endeavours, i.e sending money starving families. It could also be used towards cancer research, or anything you can imagine…

So, every bit counts. Think about it.

Hey .. this was a nice poster from you .

Can you please elaborate a bit more on how you carried out this in the mess effectively ?I am trying to do this in our mess at IIT Kanpur and I am keen to know how did you go about this and how successful you were while doing this?

One of your insti-mates Hari had asked for this poster two years back (refer to one of the comments above). For IITM, the idea never went beyond me designing these posters. Never really printed / put them up on the mess.