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Meet the chefs promoting zero-waste cooking in India, where people ‘have been eating root-to-shoot for centuries’ but modern lifestyles have intervened
- Indian households throw out more than 68 million tonnes of food waste annually, and 931 million tonnes are wasted worldwide
- Chefs from Goa to New Delhi are now more conscious about using every bit of their ingredients, and promoting a zero-waste approach in their restaurants
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According to a 2022 United Nations report, an estimated 931 million tonnes of food is wasted each year globally – and 68.7 million tonnes of it comes from India’s households. Such wastage has terrible consequences, from the loss of biodiversity to pollution and carbon emissions.
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As a result, chefs around the world are coming up with creative ways to turn their waste into nutritious dishes.
Sustainable cooking practices have long been a part of traditional Indian culture – examples include turning scraps into chutneys, curries and pickles, drying and fermenting excess produce, making rotis from leftover lentils and using every part of an animal.
While the advent of fast food and people’s increasingly hectic lifestyles have resulted in a decline in these practices, recent times have seen a shift back towards more mindful cooking and the use of kitchen waste.
Many Indian chefs now use ingredients such as the grains and vegetables local to them, repurpose or compost food waste, and avoid plastic packaging. Many are adding scraps to soups and sauces, peels to infusions and jams, and seeds to gravies. Hotels often have their own kitchen gardens and enforce no-bin days.
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