Trepidation would overcome most of you, if you happen to visit the people infested with poverty someday. The squalid temporary settlements on the roadside, the grimy bordering of naddis filled with industrial defecation and slums; the zhoddapatti that you have only seen in Bollywood movies up till now are not the depictions of a bygone era. Places like these still exists. Follow a malnourished rabid dog whose stomach has sunk in due to lack of food to scavenge upon, and you would stumble upon these new places. Behold a world of hunger.
According to World Hunger and Poverty Statistics, as of 2010; 925 million people were hungry worldwide with majority being the inhabitants of developing nations. That means 13.1 percent of the world population or almost 1 in 7 people are hungry. These alarming figures came in the wake of a research that claimed “17% more calories per person are produced by world today than it did 30 years ago.
When enough food is being produced today, then why are people still hungry?
This confusion was resolved when experts came up with rising poverty, political ideological conflicts and sudden climate changes as the reasons for the wastage of food.
Today every morsel being wasted is a slap on the faces of those who can’t afford it. To counter it the concept of “Freeganism” barges in the theater known as world and proclaims, “Voila.”
Wikipedia states,
“Freeganism is the practice of reclaiming and eating food that has been discarded.”
What started primarily as poor foraging in the dumps for food has now become a global movement claiming to adhere to principles of anarchism, anti-capitalism, environmentalism and religion. In an interview to New York Entertainer, Alf a freegan described Freeganism as a loose coalition with a real sense of global injustice.
Conceding the fact that the freegans are an unorganized lot, surprisingly their modus operandi and ethics are universally same. A good Bin Raider, who wants to live an indolent life and believes in sharing his/her catch with others is cordially welcomed in their fraternity worldwide.
Ironically this movement is confined within the boundaries of developed nations, where generally citizens have a higher standard of living as compared to the under-developed nations. In the wastage of resources, Americans ranks first with 40% of their food resources discarded annually. Imagine half eaten sandwiches, whole egg trays, cartons of milk enough to feed more than 67 million poor people worldwide rotting in bins. The research of NRDC (National Resource Defense Council) pointed out that food waste makes up the largest component of solid waste in America. In the Arab region, Saudi Arabia leads the race.
But as we divert our gaze from the developed nations to the Asian and African region of the world, a plethora of “Kabaris” can be witnessed, where even scrapped, discarded stuff is traded. The garbage dumps sports vegetable peel offs and bones that hardly have a scrape of meat clinging on them. Broken transistors and television sets are traded in the market, which are then refurbished and reused. The naked savagery of the world is evident in these kinds of places, as here “Freeganism” doesn’t exist.
With food supplies and other resources being wasted in garbage cans, it is indeed a pragmatic maneuver to consume it, rather than letting it decompose. The economic concept of “Scarcity of resources” has been known to hallucinate many wise men, but if measures will be taken to stop the resource wastage; then it is high time to rekindle your faith, as the world is rushing towards the inevitable crisis.
