Film Screening: WASTED! THE STORY OF FOOD WASTE

Can you imagine if every time you opened your wallet, a third of your cash fell out--and you did nothing about it? Consider the fact that one-third of the food grown annually for human consumption is never eaten--for one reason or another, it ends up in the garbage.  That's $218 billion - or 1.3 billion tons - of food annually. In America, families chuck about 25% of the food and beverages they buy at a cost of $1,365 to $2,275 annually.  Yet at the same time, 800 million people around the globe are starving.  It's a problem-but one with no shortages of solutions

WASTED! THE STORY OF FOOD WASTE aims to change the way people buy, cook, recycle and eat food. Through the eyes of chef-hereos like Bourdain, Dan Barber, Mario Batali, Massimo Bottura and Danny Bowien, audiences will see how the world's most influential chefs make the most of every kind of food, transforming what most people consider scraps into incredible dishes that create a more secure food system. WASTED! exposes the criminality of food waste and how it's directly contributing to climate change and shows us how each of us can make small changes- all of them delicious- to solve one of the greatest problems of the 21st century.

MODERATOR

Jonathan Bloom is a journalist, consultant and thought leader on the topic of food waste. Jonathan wrote the book American Wasteland and created the web site Wasted Food. He has spoken on food waste from North Carolina to New Zealand and has consulted with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Harvard Law School, Natural Resources Defense Council and General Mills. Jonathan is an Advisory Board member for Food Tank, ReFED and Imperfect Produce. In 2014, he was an Expert-in-Residence at Bucknell University and reprised that role at Concordia College in 2017. A Boston native, Jonathan now lives Durham, NC, with his wife, two sons and many, many containers for leftovers.

THE PANEL

Laurie “Duck” Caldwell is the Executive Director of Boston Area Gleaners. She began working as the first employee of the organization in January 2010. Under her leadership, BAG has seen a budget increase of more than 1,000% and exponential growth in capacity, from 37,545 pounds gleaned in 2010 to 635,092 pounds gleaned in 2017. Over the same period, the Gleaners have moved from serving a handful of local pantries to working with major distribution partners such as the Greater Boston Food Bank and Food for Free. Her work experience in the nonprofit sector began in 1995 and includes program and project management, program and curriculum development, and consulting. She is a carpenter by trade, has been a business owner, and has worked with farmers in VT and NH as a produce buyer for natural foods cooperatives across the northeast. She holds an MBA in Organizational Management and Sustainability from Antioch University New England.

Karen Franczyk became focused on sustainability when she and her husband decided to become farmers. They bought an organic farm in Winchendon, MA, and found their niche selling their organic heirloom tomatoes to Whole Foods Market. This relationship led to Karen deciding to work for Whole Foods Market in June, 2001. She worked her way up through the stores, spending the last 7 years in Operations as a Store Team Leader in both Providence, RI (Waterman St.) and Newton, MA (Four Corners). After 12 years in Operations, Karen moved over to the Store Development Team, where she became the Green Mission Coordinator for the North Atlantic Region.

Ismail Samad is the Executive Chef of Daily Table, a nonprofit grocery store in Boston, Massachusetts designed to simultaneously address the issues of food insecurity, nutritional health, and wasted food. He is also Co-Founder of The Gleanery, a restaurant in Putney, Vermont that specializes in the use of Post farmers market produce and the unwanted seconds and/or “ugly” foods that are habitually discarded within the many levels of the food chain. Ismail is a founding member of Windham Farm and Food, a nonprofit aggregation and delivery service providing easy access to healthy food produced in Windham County and is featured in The Vermont Table Cookbook (countryman Press)