Mission SDGs Through Food Waste Management: Nature and Approaches

Abstract

The global fraternity has been embarrassed to understand how to feed the elephantine population of this planet. The greed of comfort, convenience, and technology ecosystem has mesmerized our life in such a fashion that the human society has been up-rooted from the nature. The wave of infrastructure development results in heavy encroachment of fertile land as well as yielding to regressive fertility of land. On the contrary, the society has not learned to optimize the utilization of resources whatever forms it may be. These compel the United Nations to formulate specific target-oriented Sustainable Development Goals that need to be achieved by 2030. Food waste is still a menace of mankind. It may be of many forms and dimensions. Food waste exists in every phase of supply chain. Most surprisingly, the stigma of this menace reaches to our household also. The irony of life is that, on one hand, we are habituated to accept that wastage in foodstuff as part of our livelihood, and on the other hand, the United Nations reveals its concern for poverty, hunger, and many other unaccomplished goals. The world is now on the verge of Fourth Industrial Revolution. The IoT-based ecosystem has been emerged as an inseparable entity of the modern societies. This paper has attempted to assess and account the loss of economy for wastage of food items from global canvas to national perspective. This study has also focused on how to use IoT platform so that the food wastage can be reduced up to a considerable amount both in the supply chain and even in household practices. This research work is based on secondary information like research papers, reports, and results of other relevant studies. The paper has attempted to develop and devise a conceptual and strategic model where the IoT ecosystem can be incorporated to ensure real-time solutions and to curb on massive food wastage practices. If the model is implemented and practiced with appropriate case specific modifications and customizations, it would make the economy more efficient and address different perspectives and dimensions of UN Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) to a larger extent primarily in Indian Context.