Curbing household food waste

Most food items we buy carry an expiry date .  That is the cut off date,  after which  the producer can’t be blamed if the food item you buy turns unfit for human consumption.  Publication of the expiry date is statutory, and  in many food labels  you also find a  ‘Best-before’  date of consumption.  Which,  according to Green activist Michael Bloch,  means,  simply,  that the item  (according to the manufacturer) tastes best before that date.  “I have no problem with swallowing stuff that is past the best before date and (so far) I’ve never had a single case of food poisoning”,  Bloch says in Green Living Tips website.  He adds: “I often wonder if the ‘best before’ date is a ruse from the food industry to have us chucking out more and then buying more”.
The green activist’s  tips for cutting down our  food waste:
1) Check your fridge weekly and bring foods that will expire soon to the front
2) Ditto for your food cupboards.
3) Bulk buying can save you money, but it can cost you more, if you buy too much of items with a short use-by date or the ones that lose favor with your family.
4) It’s not unusual to find packets of chips with just a handful left, or just a swallow of orange juice left in the container.It usually sits there until it’s thrown out.
5) Supermarkets are designed to get you buying more that what you originally came in for.
6) Don’t shop from memory….cannot remember all the things you need….results in buying too much of some items and not enough of some others – and waste sometimes occurs.
7) Leaving packets open, refrigerating stuff that doesn’t require it and vice versa speeds up food spoilage.
8) Some meals you make seem to generate more waste than others. That’s fine if leftovers can be eaten the next day…or else, you need to  slowly reduce the amount you cook.
9) Use the Internet….whatever it is you have too much of in the food cupboard that’s likely  to be tossed out …you could find a squillion recipes for online!
10) Even after following the foregoing points you might end up with some waste – and also unavoidables  such as veg. peelings. Compost or  worm farm kitchen waste.

A meal ticket for the needy

Harsh Mander in  a recent magazine  piece in The Hindu  refers to sale of food token by wayside eateries at  Jama Masjid  and Nizamuddin areas  in Delhi. Idea  is customers can buy these plastic tokens  for hand-outs among the needy in the  neighbourhood. Recipients can exchange the plastic token for a take-away  parcel anytime over a period of one month. The food token system  adopted by eating houses is relevant in the context of ,  what Mr Mander terms,  erosion of  religious charity  traditions .

A scene outside Raghavendra temple at Narayana Sastri Road, Mysore.

A survey of places of worship in Delhi  found little evidence of  Christian food charities  in the city ;  mosques no longer opened  their doors to the homeless and hungry; and Hindu temples,  mostly served sweet and oily food sporadically, on fixed sacred days, and rarely with dignity.   Eating houses selling  plastic tokens  in Delhi are located in the vicinity of  places of worship that attract alms seekers.  It is a business model adopted by  eating houses ,  for the benefit  charity-minded pilgrims.

The food token system can be adopted for a drive against hunger,  elsewhere in the country.   Traders and restaurant owners associations in various localities should take a lead.  An operating system for the issue of tokens  can be  evolved by management experts.  MBA students can take it up as class project.  OMR Greens  would welcome an initiative  in this regard by management students at   Hindustan University.  We can approach traders association and eating houses at  Padur-Kelambakkam area  with a project proposal.

The  ‘luncheon voucher’  and  ‘food coupons’  issued by IT companies to employees can be a working model for restaurant and  traders associations to adopt.   Food token can be  priced on cost-sharing basis, and  all three stake holders -  traders body, eating houses in a locality, and their customers who buy the food tokens -   would be  partners  in a  CSR project (community social responsibility) to work for freedom from hunger..

Siragugal @ Ooty: Kalyani takes off

It has been a while since  I heard from my friend and blogger Kalyani in Ooty.  So  it was a pleasent surprise,  when I got a mail  from her the other day,  in her  avatar, as secretary,  Siragugal.

The last time  we interacted,  this was a few years back , she said the library she started for municipal school kids  wasn’t setting the Ooty lake on fire.  In a blogpost last month  kalyani wrote, ‘ children drop in at the library sporadically’  and those showing up on a given Sat. didn’t necessarily turn up the subsequent weekend – ‘so its hard to sustain any program’.

That was when Kalyani had occasion to attend a PTA meeting at Thalaiyattumund Municipal school,  and interact with some parents.  What did they want their children to learn ?  To speak English,  to learn Hindi, computer, karate, drawing…. the sort of things children  didn’t get at a municipal school,  but would need to get ahead in life.

Reinventing itself in 2013,  Siragugal has started  a three-month  ‘Speak English’  programme for 20 municipal school kids.  An Omni van transports them to Siragugal  library daily  after school.  The parents are asked to  pay Rs.500 per month towards transport and so they have a greater sense of commitment,  says Kalyani. She adds that they use material bought from Eureka, Chennai…Every week they pick a topic,  teach  vocabulary, with stress on dialogue,  question and answer, related educational games and activities. Volunteers are welcome to drop in,  so that children can interact with people from varied walks of life.  Saturdays are for painting, games and much else.

The next time you happen by Ooty, do  find time to drop in at  Siragugal for an evening with Kalyani’s  children.  Her mail   siragugalooty@gmail.com

Frankl’s Choice

Viktor E Frankl (1905-1997), a Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, had a choice to make, at a crucial time in life:

Frankl had applied for a visa to America, which he was granted in 1941.  By then, the Nazis had already started rounding up the Jews and taking them away to concentration camps,  focusing on the elderly first.  Frankl knew that it would only be time before the Nazis came to take his parents away.  He also knew that once they did,  he had a responsibility to be there with his parents to help them through the trauma of adjusting to camp life.  On the other hand, as a newly married man with his visa in hand, he was tempted to leave for America and flee to safety, where he could distinguish himself even further in his field.

The choice some people make in life  sorts them out from the multitude.   Frankl chose not to be part of that multitude.  And then,  he survived Auschwitz (as No.119,104),   to write of his Nazi camp life,  in ‘Man’s Search for Meaning‘.   A 1946 book that  Frankl wrote in nine days.  The book,  as preface to its 1992 edition by the author says,   has lived to see nearly 100 printings in English, besides having been published in 21 other languages.

Frankl,   engaged in digging a tunnel for laying an underground water main, was given by the construction firm, on Christmas 1944 eve, two gift coupons,  each of which could be exchanged for six cigarettes.  And a cigarette,  a common currency of exchange among prisoners,  could be bartered for a soup.  Few prisoners opted to smoke their ‘currency’.

You could borrow,  for a read,  Victor E Frankl’s   ‘search for meaning’,  or buy a copy  from online book rental   Indiareads.com.

Trash-busters @ OMR, Chennai

A reader of TOI article – OMR residents go on trash-busting drives – left a comment, asking “Where does the garbage and trash go? How do you transport it ?”   Philo Stalwin,  a resident of Kelambakkam, provides the answer:  In a mail to  OMR Greens   Stalwin says the garbage that the local panchayat collects from households and streets is dumped in make-shift landfill  by the side of  a lake  behind the Puravankara residential complex that is under construction. The trash heap is set on fire ,  every other night, burning the dump to make space for more garbage.

Trash that is burnt,  unsorted,  may include used tyre,  plastics,  spent battery,  expired medicine , and substances generating toxic fume that spread in the wind in populated neigbourhoods.  Isn’t it time people living in emerging high-rise buildings took congnizance of this smouldering health hazard ?

Skeptics ask  OMR Greens,  ‘what is the big deal in trash-busting  when garbage gets dumped at the same spot the day after it is done’?  Trash-busting is not a waste disposal solution,  but a token initiative by a community group,  to create public awareness  that waste disposal problem  can only get worse, and eventually,  unmanageable,   if we continue to  ignore it.  And   a solution has to be sought with community participation.

OMR Greens is for  a cluster approach to creating infrastructure,  for effective waste and sewage disposal. Government and civic bodies never allocate adequate funds .  Trash-busting is our ways of mobilizing support for setting up area-specific,  locality-wise waste-to-energy plant.  It is  a residents  initiative to bring together,  neighbourhood people,  panchayat, and property developers , as joint stakeholders  in creating and sustaining  social assets such as  waste-to-energy plants,  sewage-free neighbourhood lakes,  community tree-planting in public space.

Hand-in-Hand,   an NGO runs  Mamallapuram waste-to-energy unit  fed on kitchen waste collected from households,  restaurants, and hotels.  They generate energy enough to light their 3-acre unit,  and also the street that leads from the plant to ECR. The land for the waste conversion unit has been given by the local panchayat. The Mamallapuram waste-to-energy plant is located on land that was used as a trash dump by the civic authorities.

Kelambakkam panchayat can learn a lesson here.   What they can do :

1) Set aside ,  for waste-energy conversion plant,   a part of the land that is now used for dumping and burning trash;

2) Seek guidance of  NGO – Hand-in-Hand, Exnora  Indrakumar ,  Vivekananda Kendra  -  to prepare a project proposal, and costs estimate.

3) Convene a ‘town-hall’ public hearing,  to share with residents  project details,  and proposal for a monthly waste-disposal charges  (like OMR Expressway toll)  to be  collected from residents,  shops, eating houses and corporates located in the panchayat area; and

4) Levy social infrastructure fee on property developers, in proportion to the scale, size and the number of apartments.

Students for community service

A couple of college boys  (KSR College, Tiruchengode)  hit upon a community initiative to address food wastage by customers in restaurants.  They got a poster printed ,  showing  photo of a needy child  with empty plate.  The message :  ‘Please don’t waste food….wrap it’.

Palaniappan, and  Mohammed Ali, both engineering students, with Merwin Wesley,  found waste of  food by people visiting restaurants unacceptable and decided to do something about it.  The boys designed and printed about 4,000  ‘don’t-waste-food’ posters and distributed in restaurants and eating house in several Tamil Nadu towns, through a network of volunteer students.  They have mobilised over 100 volunteers in 17 towns.

Muhammad Ali – 0-8122139893- and Palaniappan – 0-9500488803 -   registered a society SEEDS.   They conduct awareness programme  to curb wastage of food, household  energy consumption  and conserve  other resources.  Their student volunteers  visit old age homes. With guidance from college alumni, SEEDS conduct counseling sessions in schools for Plus 1 and Plus 2 students  on choice of courses and subjects for higher education.

Interestingly,  the focus of SEEDS  initiative is on smaller towns – Dharmapuri, Erode, Darapuram, Bhavani, Attur, Mettur, Udmelpet, Hosur and Sathy. They  have volunteer representation in some  bigger cities as well – Trichy,  Selam,  Coimbatore, Tirupur,  and Chennai  (volunteers – Sibi Rajan and Rahul).

SEEDS approached 20 schools in Mettupalayam,  Erode and Tirupur,  asked students to come up with 15 suggestions to conserve electricity… School students are involved in household energy auditing in their neighbourhood, and community tree-planting in their localities.  During Deepavali,  SEEDS ogranised  door-to-door and distributed 5,000 pamphlets on how firecrackers pollute environment.

Says SEEDS president Muhammad Ali:  “We don’t approach the Government; instead we go to people. They have supported us. Some people have thrown the pamphlets back on our faces, we take it in our stride.”

Secretary Palaniappan: “I used to spend my pocket money on mobile recharge and snacks. Now, I save it to buy gifts for school children as we conduct a number of competitions for school students.”

Mahabaratha for the Facebook Generation

Writers at times resort to fiction to push their  hypothesis  that counter  long held social beliefs.  On such belief sustained by caretakers of the Hindu faith is that Krishna is  a mythological figure.  And here comes  Ashwin Sanghi   who depicts Krishna,  not as a figure conjured up by collective minds several generations back,  but as a historical person who lived 138 generations before the times of Alexander and Chandragupta Maurya.

A fascinating proposition,  this.  In his latest fiction – The Krishna Key -  Sanghi explores the possibility that Mahabharata is based on historical reality.  What’s more,  he relates the epic to contemperory times;  he interpretes Mahabharata for the benefit of the Facebook generation.  And dresses  up his version as  a theological thriller that ought to interest crime suspense addicts and conspiracy buffs .  Sanghi’s book is categorized as  ‘Thriller’  in ISBN coding.

My interest in the book,  when Blogadda   offered it under their book review  programme,  arose because of what I had read about the writer.  Ashwin Sanghi,  engaged in his family business,  presumably, does his writing on weekends. Theological thriller is his genre. Such a mix evokes one’s interest in a writer.  What’s more,  Sanghi has flair for the social media;  and uses if effectively to promote his books.  As he put it, ‘in my world,  platforms like Facebook,  Twitter,  and YouTube allow me to reach out to my readers far more effectively than I would ever have been able to without them’.

The narrative runs at two levels.  If such creative writing poses its own challenge for the writer, I found it no less  of a challenge,  as a reader.  I can’t say I felt comfortable,  having to keep pace with the run of events ,  moving on parallel tracks. The characters in the two layers of  plot relate to periods  that are 5000 years apart. At one level we have a 5,000 year old story,  of  tyrant Kansa’s  futile attempt to kill his nephew Krishna, before he grew up to take on Kansa.  The plot is peopled with figures such as Kansa, his sister, Devaki, her husband Vasudeva and their eighth son Krishna.

At the other level is this crime thriller playing out in Kaliyug, with charecters such as  history professor Ravi Mohan Saini,  who gets arrested  for the murder he didn’t commit,  of  a close friend and archeologist Anil Varshvey. The two,  along with Dr Nikhil Bhojaraj, another academic, and Prof. Rajaram Kurkude, doing research in nuclear science,  hold  archaeological finds  ,  comprising the Krishna Key that can unlock the truth of  Krishna having been a historial entity,  rather than mythological figure.  Before  they could  piece together their finds to resolve a theological puzzle, they are targeted by a serial killer. And then there is  a female cop chasing the wrong suspect . Inspector Radhika Singh holds a cigarette in one hand and  prayer beads in the other.  The tough-talking   Radhika  drops in unannounced in Saini’s class-room, and announces his arrest,  baffling the students. I don’t see how such Bollywood type melodrama furthers the  narrative.  Couldn’t the cop have waited till Prof.Saini finished the class ?

Ideally,  it is a book that ought to be read in one go. If you take The Krishna Key in instalments, as I did,  you might have to re-read a few preceding pages every time you pick up the book, to get the hang of the narrative thread.

Some reviewers reckon Ashwin Sanghi is India’s answer to Dan Brown.  I don’t know about it , for I confess,  The  Da Vinci Code  didn’t interest me. Now that I have read  Sanghi,  I wouldn’t, probably,  pass up Brown,  if I happen by his book.