In June 2019, before the world went into a pandemic-enforced lockdown, Uttarakhand’s serene Auli Ski Resort became the stage for one of India’s most extravagant weddings, hosted by none other than the controversial Gupta brothers from South Africa.
The Guptas, non-resident Indian businessmen known for their clout, spared no expense as they married off their sons in a spectacle that is estimated to have cost over USD 24 million.
Over the course of a week, every hotel and resort in Auli was booked, helicopters ferried in guests, and the town transformed into a VIP fortress. Lavish decor, gourmet feasts, and drone-shot ceremonies turned the quiet Himalayan resort into what some dubbed “the Ambani wedding of the hills.”
But once the music stopped, Auli was left reeling, not from the afterglow of celebration, but from the environmental wreckage it left behind.
Authorities found the region littered with mounds of garbage, 320 quintals of it. The Joshimath municipality fined the Gupta family USD 3,000 for open defecation and indiscriminate littering. An additional USD 9,600 was spent just to clean up the mess. The glittering festivities had left behind not just confetti, but a solid ecological crisis. For a billionaire family that was not even peanuts, leaving the residents of the area with a bitter aftertaste.
Hence, in a painfully ironic twist, a celebration meant to mark new beginnings ended up triggering legal scrutiny and civic embarrassment, offering a stark reminder that in the fragile ecosystems of the Himalayas, even vows can leave scars.
Weddings: A silent killer of environment
In India, it is not just high-profile weddings that leave an environmental footprint. Even middle-class weddings, fuelled by rising disposable incomes and aspirations of upward mobility, can cause significant pollution. From excessive food waste and blaring noise to heaps of single-use plastics and floral decorations, these celebrations often generate large amounts of waste and strain local resources.
However, the most alarming aspect remains the sheer amount of food wasted during wedding functions.
According to the global non-profit organisation Food Tank, Indian weddings are a major contributor to the country’s annual food waste, which results in losses estimated at around USD 14 billion. As per NGO Feeding India, 10 to 20 pc of the food served at weddings goes to waste.
Deepak Malani, a caterer based in Pune, says that food waste at larger events typically ranges between 10–15 pc, which is higher than at smaller parties or conferences. According to him, bigger gatherings tend to result in more excess food.
“In weddings or big events, around 10–15 pc of the food gets wasted. At conferences like medical or education ones, the crowd is large, so it is hard to predict. But with big events, the menu is more extensive, and that is where food tends to get wasted,” Malani tells Media India Group.
According to Saheb Singh, owner of a catering firm in Dehradun, excess food often ends up being discarded, especially during summer, when it tends to spoil more quickly.
“In many places, if there is excess food, especially during summers when there is a lot of work, it becomes difficult to store it overnight because cooked food spoils quickly. If there is something like a mushroom-based dish and it goes bad, it has to be dumped. And if the food is spoiled, it is not right to give it to anyone else,” Singh tells Media India Group.
Singh further added that food often goes to waste due to clients miscalculating the number of guests or overestimating the quantity required.
“If we cater 10 events, the large-scale food wastage might happen once or twice. But it usually happens when the client overestimates the number of guests, say they are expecting 100 people, but due to something unexpected, like heavy rain, only 20 or 25 show up. By then, the food is already cooked and it is made specifically for that event. We do outdoor catering, not restaurant service, so it is difficult to repurpose that food elsewhere. Even if we have another event the next day, the menu is often completely different. If it is summer, storing food overnight becomes a real challenge. It needs proper cold storage, and not everyone has that. We have set up our own system, but even that has its limits, I can maybe store food for 30 to 35 people, not more,” adds Singh.
Implications of happily ever after
With India witnessing nearly 10 million weddings annually, these grand celebrations have become one of the country’s major sources of food wastage and a growing driver of methane emissions. According to Feeding India, anywhere between 30 and 50 kg of food is wasted at an average Indian wedding. In elite weddings, this figure can soar to a staggering 800 kg.
Shivam Kapoor, a Delhi’s city representative with the Robin Hood Army, points out that the rising trend of unlimited food, popularly known as the buffet system, has further fuelled the problem
“The new culture that has caught on in India is this trend of unlimited food in buffet systems, it is all over social media right now. People come in, pay a fixed amount, and the moment they hear it is unlimited, they fill their plates way beyond what they can eat. Ultimately, most of it is wasted. Since it has already been touched or served on someone’s plate, it cannot even be redistributed,” Kapoor tells Media India Group.
But it is not just weddings driving the surge in food waste across India. Restaurants, supermarkets, and even regular households are part of the problem. From overstocked shelves and oversized portions to forgotten leftovers in home refrigerators, food is discarded at every step of the supply chain, often while millions still go hungry.
“When it comes to restaurant owners, many of them do not even realise that the food they are throwing away could actually feed someone. For them, it is just business, they often do not want to take ownership or responsibility. They worry that if they donate leftover food and someone falls sick, maybe because of spillage, the food sitting out too long, or a drop in quality, it could damage their reputation. So, out of fear of liability and to protect their image, they will rather waste the food than share it,” adds Kapoor.
As a result, the scale of global food waste is nothing short of staggering. According to the Food Waste Index Report 2021 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and WRAP, a staggering 931 million tonnes of food were wasted in 2019 alone. Surprisingly, it was not just restaurants or supermarkets to blame, households were the biggest culprits, responsible for 61 pc of the waste, while food services accounted for 26 pc and retail for 13 pc.
“If you look at households, the pattern is quite similar to restaurants. For example, smaller restaurants usually have around 25–30 leftover meals a day. A mid-sized chain, like one with multiple outlets across Delhi, can have 100–150 meals left over daily. Bigger places like five-star hotels, often waste over 500 meals a day. It all depends on their scale. In households, too, there are usually 1–2 meals left over every day. It may seem small, but since the number of households is huge, it adds up to a massive amount overall,” adds Kapoor.
Despite food abundance, India continues to face a serious hunger crisis. In the 2024 Global Hunger Index, it ranks 105th out of 127 countries with a score of 27.3. About 13.7 pc of the population is undernourished, and 35.5 pc of children under five are stunted, highlighting deep-rooted nutritional challenges.
Methane knocks on door
Additionally, the continuous wastage of food, particularly from weddings and restaurants, has also added to India’s growing environmental burden. In cities like Delhi, this waste is feeding an escalating crisis. Landfills at Ghazipur, Bhalswa, and Okhla have turned into towering garbage mounds, some reportedly as tall as the Qutub Minar, now major sources of methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.
According to the AQI Blog, poor waste segregation and the lack of gas capture systems mean these sites leak methane directly into the air. Delhi alone produces over 10,000 tonnes of waste daily, of which 50–55 pc is biodegradable, much of it, leftover food. As this organic matter decays, it releases methane, accelerating climate change and worsening air quality.
The crisis does not end at the landfills. According to Kapoor, a combination of overpopulation, intensive farming, and chemical use has severely affected India’s soil health, much of it driven by the demand to produce more food than is consumed.
“Right now, the bigger issue is the large-scale impact. We are farming excessively due to our large population, and with that, the use of fertilisers and pesticides is increasing every day. But in the end, a lot of that food is wasted. If we just cooked and ate as per our capacity, we could reduce waste, reduce farming, and also cut down on chemicals. It is all connected in a cycle,” adds Kapoor.
The cost of this cycle is already evident. Since 2020, satellites have detected 124 major methane leaks from Delhi’s landfills.
For those living near these sites, residents frequently report breathlessness, sore throats, and chronic cough, especially during landfill fires. Long-term exposure increases the risk of asthma, lung infections, and heart conditions, particularly among children and the elderly.
“People who hire catering services often do not realise the impact of leftover food. Since they have already paid, it doesn’t matter to them how much is left. If the event is at a banquet hall, they cannot even carry it back. Plus, with so much going on during a function, food waste is not really a priority for them, they just do not think about it,” adds Singh.
As methane emissions rise and soil health declines, the solution lies not just in better waste management, but in rethinking how India celebrates. With better planning, awareness, and food redistribution efforts, weddings and events can remain joyful, without costing the environment.
