Seventy-eight
million tonnes.
Every single year.
That's how much food Indian homes throw away every year — while one in seven Indians goes to bed undernourished. We're trying to change that.
INDIA, BY THE NUMBERS
The scale is hard to imagine.
Of food wasted by Indian households every year
Source: UNEP Food Waste Index 2024
Thrown away at home, per Indian, every year
Source: UNEP Food Waste Index 2024
Estimated value of food lost in India each year
Source: ICAR post-harvest loss estimates
Indians undernourished while good food goes to waste
Source: FAO, Global Hunger Index 2024
For context: 78 million tonnes a year means roughly 2 lakh tonnes of good food thrown away every single day — from kitchens just like ours.
WHERE IT HAPPENS
It's not just one place.
Food waste happens at every step of the supply chain — from farms to households. Two parts of the chain are where ResQBox can help most.
60%
of the world's food waste comes from households
Our kitchens
Indian households throw away around 55 kg of food per person every year — roughly 78 million tonnes as a nation. For a typical family, that's thousands of rupees of good food in the bin, every single year.
Source: UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024.
28%
comes from restaurants, canteens, and catering
Our kitchens, professionally
From biryani houses and tiffin centres to bakeries, hotels, and wedding caterers — every food business in India faces the same problem: unpredictable demand at the end of every service, and perfectly good food with nowhere to go.
Source: UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 (global food-service share).
ResQBox connects the two — turning hospitality surplus into household savings before it ever reaches a bin.
THE CLIMATE COST
“If global food waste were a country, it would be the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases — after the United States and China.”
Food loss and waste account for roughly 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions — several times the footprint of all aviation combined.
When food rots in landfill, it releases methane — a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In Indian cities, most food waste ends up exactly there: in open dumpsites and overflowing landfills.
Eliminating global food waste would save 4.4 billion tonnes of CO₂ a year — roughly the equivalent of taking one in four cars off the road.
Sources: UN Environment Programme, IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, FAO.
GLOBAL CONTEXT
Small per person. Enormous as a nation.
Indians waste less per person than most large economies — but at 1.4 billion people, India's household food waste is among the largest on Earth.
China
109M
tonnes/year (households)
INDIA
78M
tonnes/year (households)
United States
25M
tonnes/year (households)
Japan
8M
tonnes/year (households)
Australia
3M
tonnes/year (households)
At 55 kg per person, India is far below the US (~73 kg) or Australia (~102 kg). Scale is what makes our number huge — which also means small changes by millions of people add up faster here than anywhere else.
Source: UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024, household estimates. Figures rounded.
PER BOX, ON AVERAGE
What one rescued meal does.
Each box is small. The arithmetic is real.
~1.5 kg
of food saved from landfill
A typical Meal Box contains a meal or two for one or two people — food that would have gone in the bin at end of service.
~3.5 kg
of CO₂-equivalent emissions avoided
Based on industry averages for prepared meal weight and emissions, every box keeps a small but real amount of methane out of the atmosphere.
~85%
of every rupee back to the kitchen
After our 15% commission, the rest stays with the restaurant that made the food. Every box helps keep an independent kitchen open another month.
All figures are conservative estimates based on industry-average meal weights, food-waste emission factors, and our own commission structure. Real impact varies by box, restaurant, and food type. We'll update with verified ResQBox-specific numbers as we publish our first impact report.
HONEST FRAMING
We won't end food waste alone.
Food waste is a vast, multi-stage problem. Farms, processors, distributors, retailers, restaurants, and households all play a part. No single platform — including ours — is going to solve it on its own.
ResQBox is one piece of the answer. We connect surplus food at the end of the hospitality chain with people who'll eat it before it becomes waste. That's a small slice of a 78 million tonne problem.
But it's a slice that didn't have a good answer until apps like ours existed. And every box rescued is one that actually didn't go in the bin. We're committed to publishing real impact numbers as we grow — not estimates, real ones.
BE PART OF IT
Every rescued meal is a small win.
Whether you eat or you cook — ResQBox is one tap away.
Eat with us
Cook with us
Seventy-eight million tonnes is a staggering number.
Every meal we rescue is one less.