No Food Waste

Today's youngsters who want to serve the society are not just starting NGOs but social startups. The difference being NGOs depend on donations but social startups strive to manage their own financials while they are serving the society. For someone who wonders how it can be possible - one should look at the journey of 'No Food Waste'. The 3 founders of the organization have received national recognition by feeding lakhs of needy people in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The three founders are once classmates, benchmates and hostel roommates during engineering. They have started a startup 'Spice India' which teaches science and maths using different tools in government schools. During such interaction they came across a girl who shared about a wedding she visited where the leftover food was thrown in garbage and beggars were eating from those waste food. Later, they have established a helpline number and distributed pamphlets in Marriage Function halls to call them if they have any leftover food. Two weeks later, they got a call from a wedding venue. They went in city bus with a plastic bag and collected the food. They packed the food and distributed to 52 people in the district hospital. Once they became famous through social media, they received calls from many such places. They have established a call center and created a Digital Hunger map which maps the location which requires food for the day alongwith the venue where the food can be collected. They were able to serve 500 plates by end of the month. They have named this as "No Food Waste". If the three friends-Padmanaban Gopalan, Dinesh Manickam and Sudhakar Mohan, have gone the same way they would have become another one of these kind of organization. But they have started a new journey...

Since there won't be weddings on every day even in the biggest cities, they came up with the concept of Micro Community Kitchen. Due to their recognition, corporates like Zoho came forward to help them in this programme. With the donations received, they cooked the food and delivered. Not even corporates but individuals started giving for occasions like birthdays. In 2015, a branch was opened in Tadepalligudem and later branches opened in Eluru, Palakallu, Vijayawada, Vizag. In 2016, a branch was opened in Hyderabad and later spread to Warangal, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Kagaznagar. These branches are catering to the hunger needs of nine lakh people per month across the 3 states. In 2022, this organization has helped recover 31 lakh plates of surplus food from 16 cities across the country feeding around 19 lakh people in need.

How it works:

1. Call Centre Team receives the food calls and collects the details of donors, food menu, food quantity and time the food was cooked.

2. Field Team in the Office & Storage Unit receives details from the Call Centre Team and follows the donor mentioning the pick-up time and also marks near hunger spot.

3. The field team collects excess food from the Supply Spot in dedicated vehicle and vessels.

4. The collected food is then distributed in the nearby hunger spot to ensure immediate transfer of foods to needy to avoid it getting spoiled with the help of hunger spot volunteers.

As a part of the food recovery process, 'No Food Waste' collects samples of each food to check its freshness with odor, texture and taste. The quality of the food is ensured during collection and distribution to the needy. Certain menus such as coconut added items, curd/butter items are avoided since they get spoil at a faster rate.

The government of Tamil Nadu has assigned few districts to 'No Food Waste' for its Mid-day Meals programme. The funds they received from Government and corporates are not considered as donations but as commission. There is no profit expectation. They utilize the amount to run the organization and become financially self sufficient. In 2017, it won the "Best Innovation Practises" award from Central Government. In 2019, 'No Food Waste' received the Commonwealth Youth Award for Asia Region towards United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goal 02 “Zero Hunger”.