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Too many slices in a full loaf? This program helps to find half a loaf for sale: NPR

Prashant Baid’s search engine found shops selling half a loaf of bread, in some of India’s biggest cities.

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Prashant Baid’s search engine found shops selling half a loaf of bread, in some of India’s biggest cities.

Dan Kitwood / Getty Images

Prashant Baid doesn’t want to be the type to throw half a loaf of moldy bread every week. He’s been that person for too many years, he told NPR.

“I love bread but I can’t eat 20 slices in 3 days,” he explained in an email.

“Bread has such a short shelf life and I don’t want to waste food, so it makes more sense to buy bread in less quantity. Sure you can freeze them, but it doesn’t taste as good as it.” fresh bread”. he added.

Always a realist, Baid says that for people like him – single people living alone – it makes much more sense to buy half a loaf of bread. “But most stores don’t sell them.”

So he did what came naturally: he created a program to help him, and others, find half a loaf to sell at local stores. For Baid, that means local shops in India, where he currently lives.

“I love building fun and small projects on the internet,” he says, adding that in this case, “honestly, I just do it for myself.” That’s why the search engine is limited to a handful of cities around the country, he said.

But clearly he was hit by something, he admitted.

In the first 12 hours from launch halfloafnear.me, the site received more than 16,000 hits, according to Baid. That lets him know other people think it’s a problem, too, he said.

To Baid’s surprise, most of the attention he’s received on the project so far has come from half a world away. Despite the fact that the half-drive search engine is only available for Indian cities, it has received more comments from Americans than anyone else, he said. And most of these people from the US seemed “annoyed that the stores there also had very limited half-loaf available,” Baid said.

Food waste is a serious problem worldwide, with devastating effects on the environment and national economies. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, one-third of all food produced around the world is wasted.

In terms of environmental impacts, the United Nations Environment Program reports that if food waste could be represented by its country, it would be third largest greenhouse gas emissions, behind China and the United States. In addition, the resources required to produce food have a carbon footprint of approx 3.3 billion tons of CO2.

In the US alone, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is worth $161 billion waste in 2010, according to the USDA. Food takes up more space in the US Landfills more than anything else, according to the EPA.

One source of the problem is Americans buy too much groceries that they never worry about eating.

Those numbers weren’t necessarily on Baid’s mind when he created the site, but he’s glad it resonated with people in general.

“The fact that it is so little spread shows that there are many other young people around the world who are working/studying and living alone in cities who also don’t want to waste food.

“For products that have a very short shelf life, you should have an option to buy them in smaller quantities.”

Baid added, he’s optimistic that his own “silly little niche project” can inspire others to create their own localized versions of more than just bread.

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