Amal Thakur
Yesterday was just another shift at the supermarket, the kind of job I’ve been doing for extra cash while finishing up my bioengineering degree here in Sydney, Australia. But instead of stocking shelves or manning the registers, I was assigned to handle the expired and unsellable food. The amount was staggering—a whole truckload of perfectly edible items that didn’t make the cut. Boxes of fresh produce with a few blemishes, bread that was barely a day old, cartons of milk a day past the sell-by date. All of it, straight into the waste bin.
I couldn’t shake the feeling of unease as I heaved box after box into the dumpster. It felt wrong, like I was complicit in something deeply unjust. My mind drifted to last year’s visit to India, where my parents and I visited family. The stark contrast between the life I’ve known here in Sydney and the struggles of my relatives back in India was glaring. It’s been over 20 years since my parents moved here, chasing the promise of a better life, and they’ve worked tirelessly to build one. My dad started on a building site, and here I am, 26 years old, studying to enter a field that’s all about solving problems. But yesterday, it felt like I was part of the problem.
After my shift, I went home and fell into a rabbit hole of articles and statistics about food waste. Australia, with all its abundance, is one of the worst offenders. An average of 361 kilograms of food per person is wasted every year. The irony isn’t lost on me—my parents, who came from nothing and often went hungry, raised me in a country where we throw away food like it’s nothing. The more I read, the more disturbed I became. It’s one thing to know that waste exists; it’s another to be the one shoveling it into a dumpster.
I’ve decided I can’t keep doing this. It’s not just a job—it’s become a moral dilemma I can’t ignore. So, I’m quitting. It feels like a small gesture, almost insignificant in the grand scheme of things. But I can’t keep contributing to a system that’s so deeply flawed. I’ll find another way to make ends meet while I finish my degree—one that doesn’t leave me feeling like I’m betraying everything my parents taught me.