TAKING THE EAST COAST BY STORM
June 7, 2014
By Amanda Brasgalla
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Our time in the nation’s capital was a whirlwind of interviews, archival research, shooting B-roll, and tons of East Coast traffic.
The visit began on Tuesday, June 3, when the team split up and headed in opposite directions. Taylor and I spent the night in D.C. for reasons I will explain in a moment.
Meanwhile, Olivia and Rob drove south to Durham, N.C. for an afternoon meeting the next day, Wednesday, June 4, with Jonathan Bloom, an author and expert on food waste.
Bloom, a journalist by training, has spent the last 10 years researching and writing about food waste. In his 2010 book, American Wasteland, Bloom explores multiple food issues from farm to fork. Bloom pointed out that food waste is a vexing issue because it does not occur at one point in the cycle. It occurs at all points in the cycle.
While Olivia and Rob interviewed Bloom, Taylor and I met with representatives of a national organization based in D.C. called the Campus Kitchens Project. Later that day, we also met with a top official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In different ways, both organizations are working to address food waste from different angles.
First, a little about the Campus Kitchens Project, or its common acronym, CKP. A non-profit, CKP is dedicated to establishing student-run kitchens at U.S. high schools colleges and universities with the primary purpose of providing healthy meals to community members in need. During our visit, we met with CKP director Laura Toscano and her colleague Matt Schnarr, the expansion and partnerships manager.
During both conversations, Toscano and Schnarr stressed how food waste correlates to broader issues, one of which is a key CKP goal – fighting hunger by using food that would otherwise go to waste.
“It doesn’t make sense that people are going hungry and yet there is so much excess food,” said Schnarr. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Schnarr also explained, however, that diverting food that might otherwise be wasted is not a silver bullet.
“There are lots of other factors also playing a really important role in both hunger and food insecurity,” said Schnarr.
Some of those factors include economic status, cultural influences and social boundaries. Each of these elements play a role in the impact food waste has on society.
After spending time with Schnarr and Toscano, Taylor and I met with Mathy Stanislaus, the EPA’s assistant administrator in the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.
Stanislaus pointed out that each year American families throw away as much $1,600 worth of food. By reducing such waste, families could lessen impacts on the environment and ease the strain on their pocketbooks.
On Thursday, June 5, with Olivia and Rob back from North Carolina, we split up again for another busy day. Rob and I dropped off Taylor and Olivia at a U.S. National Archives facility in suburban Maryland, where they spent much of the day searching for historical footage that we might incorporate into the film.
In the meantime, Rob and I headed back into the District to meet with Carrie Calvert, director of tax and commodity policy for Feeding America, one of the nation’s leading hunger relief agencies.
“I think we’ve seen that hunger has a huge societal cost,” Calvert said, noting that children and adults who do not get enough nutritious food to eat often suffer in school or work.
For instance, access to nutritious food for the elderly can also affect whether seniors age at home or in nursing facilities. Hunger can affect multiple people in multiple ways, Calvert explained, thus affecting society at large.
On Friday, June 6, we concluded our D.C. interviews by meeting with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Director of Sustainable Development Elise Golan, Ph.D. According to USDA statistics, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is wasted annually at the retail and consumer levels.
“It’s a shocking amount,” Golan said. “It hits us all in the gut.”
The USDA aims to reduce in coming years by educating people about the obvious – and not so obvious – impacts of food waste.
“Our whole objective is to change the momentum and change the way we think about it,” Golan said.
As we learn more about how and why food waste occurs, the notion of behavior change has emerged as a common thread in the food equation. Since food waste encompasses social, economic and environmental concerns, there are multiple perspectives exist about how it might be resolved.
June 7, 2014
By Amanda Brasgalla
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Our time in the nation’s capital was a whirlwind of interviews, archival research, shooting B-roll, and tons of East Coast traffic.
The visit began on Tuesday, June 3, when the team split up and headed in opposite directions. Taylor and I spent the night in D.C. for reasons I will explain in a moment.
Meanwhile, Olivia and Rob drove south to Durham, N.C. for an afternoon meeting the next day, Wednesday, June 4, with Jonathan Bloom, an author and expert on food waste.
Bloom, a journalist by training, has spent the last 10 years researching and writing about food waste. In his 2010 book, American Wasteland, Bloom explores multiple food issues from farm to fork. Bloom pointed out that food waste is a vexing issue because it does not occur at one point in the cycle. It occurs at all points in the cycle.
While Olivia and Rob interviewed Bloom, Taylor and I met with representatives of a national organization based in D.C. called the Campus Kitchens Project. Later that day, we also met with a top official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In different ways, both organizations are working to address food waste from different angles.
First, a little about the Campus Kitchens Project, or its common acronym, CKP. A non-profit, CKP is dedicated to establishing student-run kitchens at U.S. high schools colleges and universities with the primary purpose of providing healthy meals to community members in need. During our visit, we met with CKP director Laura Toscano and her colleague Matt Schnarr, the expansion and partnerships manager.
During both conversations, Toscano and Schnarr stressed how food waste correlates to broader issues, one of which is a key CKP goal – fighting hunger by using food that would otherwise go to waste.
“It doesn’t make sense that people are going hungry and yet there is so much excess food,” said Schnarr. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Schnarr also explained, however, that diverting food that might otherwise be wasted is not a silver bullet.
“There are lots of other factors also playing a really important role in both hunger and food insecurity,” said Schnarr.
Some of those factors include economic status, cultural influences and social boundaries. Each of these elements play a role in the impact food waste has on society.
After spending time with Schnarr and Toscano, Taylor and I met with Mathy Stanislaus, the EPA’s assistant administrator in the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.
Stanislaus pointed out that each year American families throw away as much $1,600 worth of food. By reducing such waste, families could lessen impacts on the environment and ease the strain on their pocketbooks.
On Thursday, June 5, with Olivia and Rob back from North Carolina, we split up again for another busy day. Rob and I dropped off Taylor and Olivia at a U.S. National Archives facility in suburban Maryland, where they spent much of the day searching for historical footage that we might incorporate into the film.
In the meantime, Rob and I headed back into the District to meet with Carrie Calvert, director of tax and commodity policy for Feeding America, one of the nation’s leading hunger relief agencies.
“I think we’ve seen that hunger has a huge societal cost,” Calvert said, noting that children and adults who do not get enough nutritious food to eat often suffer in school or work.
For instance, access to nutritious food for the elderly can also affect whether seniors age at home or in nursing facilities. Hunger can affect multiple people in multiple ways, Calvert explained, thus affecting society at large.
On Friday, June 6, we concluded our D.C. interviews by meeting with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Director of Sustainable Development Elise Golan, Ph.D. According to USDA statistics, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is wasted annually at the retail and consumer levels.
“It’s a shocking amount,” Golan said. “It hits us all in the gut.”
The USDA aims to reduce in coming years by educating people about the obvious – and not so obvious – impacts of food waste.
“Our whole objective is to change the momentum and change the way we think about it,” Golan said.
As we learn more about how and why food waste occurs, the notion of behavior change has emerged as a common thread in the food equation. Since food waste encompasses social, economic and environmental concerns, there are multiple perspectives exist about how it might be resolved.