IPE student Swapnil kova fights food wastage with #MyPlateIsClean

Say hello to Swapnil Kova, a 22-year-old Hyderabadi who has been devising and executing a remarkable strategy to curb food wastage in the country over the past few days! A final year student of Institute of Public Enterprise in Shamirpet, Swapnil has kicked off a social media challenge, #MyPlateIsClean, to encourage his fellow college-mates to stop wasting food.
The basic premise of the challenge is the same as any other social media challenge there is — once you’ve been nominated for the challenge, you must post a picture of yourself and the plate that you’ve been eating on with the hashtag #MyPlateIsClean. “It works well because who would want to show off a plate that’s not empty!” says Swapnil.

Interestingly, he has tweaked the challenge to make sure that it doesn’t die down after a week or two. “I wanted to give my college-mates an incentive to carry this challenge forward. I realised it was a way of bringing people together and thought it would be great if I fused this challenge with the idea of making new friends,” says Swapnil, who’s also the Student Coordinator of Cultural Club in his college.
He elaborates, “There are 1100 students in the college, out of which 540 are juniors. I rounded up all the juniors, because they’re the ones with fresh heads, and divided them into groups of nine. There are 60 groups as of now and each group will perform the challenge and click a selfie at the selfie booth that we’ve placed in the canteen. And their pictures go up on social media with the hashtag.” This way, he adds, not only will these students who come from diverse courses and backgrounds get to know each other, but also serve the cause of curbing food wastage.

So, how did this idea come about in the first place? “On the night of July 26, I was browsing through the Internet when I came across a picture of a stand-board placed in the TCS cafeteria. It said, ‘Serve what you can eat and eat what you can serve’,” says Swapnil. Inspired by the words, he decided to think up a way to control the food waste problem in his college canteen. “

Shortly after coming up with a rough plan, I sent mails to the entire college fraternity, including Deans, professors and students, explaining the concept and seeking permission to launch the challenge. They were very supportive,” he adds. The challenge has been actively carried out by the students in the Institute for the past one week.

Swapnil is quite pleased that a lot of marketing has gone into making the challenge work. “We’ve designed banners, selfie booths, stickers, labels, and posters to make some noise in the campus about this challenge. It has helped get the attention of both the junior and senior batches.” He adds that they have even placed a stand-board in the cafeteria to indicate how much food has been wasted at the end of the day. “The people who run the canteen were so happy with the results that the challenge has brought out.”
It’s not surprising that Swapnil wants to take this challenge to a national level. “I have read somewhere that every day we waste up to 30% food in the country. The situation is quite alarming. I hope this challenge helps to check food wastage in any institution — be it hotels, caterers, campuses or even government institutions,” says Swapnil, signing off.