Vegetable Waste as a Source of Wealth: A Novel Approach

Abstract

India is one of the world’s largest agricultural nations, producing a largenumber of fruits and vegetables. The amount of waste produced daily byeach household has increased as the global population has risen due todemand for food and other necessities. Every year, 18 percent of India’sfruit and vegetable production, worth Rs. 13300 crore is wasted. Due toa lack of proper cold storage facilities, approximately 30 % of the fruitsand vegetables grown in India are wasted each year at any point of thesupply chain, from harvesting to processing to postharvest to consumption.Therefore, this waste content should be used in such a way that the greatestpossible benefits should be achieved and extracted without incurring anyfinancial loss or posing any environmental risks. As a result, waste materialsgenerated by these industries can be composted and landfilled throughaerobic or anaerobic treatment, biogas production, animal feed, andvalue-added products. Hence, waste disposal is a serious issue; therefore,vegetable waste should be used in such a way that the most significantpossible benefits can be achieved and extracted without incurring anyfinancial loss or posing any environmental risks. Vegetable waste materialcan produce economically or commercially viable products such as biofuel,biogas, manure, and other applications as an effective waste managementsolution that does not harm the environment.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.10.001114

Pages

110 - 115

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords