On November 18 & 19, Waste Free Greenwich hosted a screening of the documentary “Just Eat It” to kick off the Save the Food Challenge followed by a panel discussion featuring Love Your Food NY’s Elisabeth Radow, Chef Raquel Rivera of A Pinch of Salt, Waste Free Greenwich founder Julie DesChamps and moderator Ali Ghiorse.
Click here to view trailer and find below a recording of the panel discussion.
ABOUT “JUST EAT IT”
We all love food. As a society, we devour countless cooking shows, culinary magazines and foodie blogs. So how could we possibly be throwing nearly 50% of it in the trash?
Filmmakers and food lovers Jen and Grant dive into the issue of waste from farm, through retail, all the way to the back of their own fridge. After catching a glimpse of the billions of dollars of good food that is tossed each year in North America, they pledge to quit grocery shopping cold turkey and survive only on foods that would otherwise be thrown away.
Just Eat It looks at our systemic obsession with expiry dates, perfect produce and portion sizes, and reveals the core of this seemingly insignificant issue that is having devastating consequences around the globe.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Elisabeth (Beth) Radow is the co-developer of Love Your Food, formed to educate and enlist community residents to reduce wasted food, share excess food and compost the rest. Beth is the managing attorney of Radow Law PLLC focusing on real property law combined with sustainable practices involving energy and environmental conservation. She chairs the Committee on Energy, Agriculture and the Environment of the League of Women Voters of NYS. Beth was a leader in the successful effort to ban high volume hydraulic fracturing in New York State. Beth is a current board member and former president of the League of Women Voters of Larchmont/Mamaroneck, current member of the Town of Mamaroneck Sustainability Collaborative and Professor of Sustainability Action at Manhattanville College.
Chef Raquel Rivera is a culinary educator and owner of A Pinch of Salt. In 2011, she served as the chef instructor at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger providing patrons of the food pantry a hands-on cooking program to prepare healthy, budget-friendly meals. Chef Raquel also worked at Wellness in the Schools, a non-profit focusing on introducing healthier, scratch cooked meals in NYC public schools. In addition, she volunteered for City Harvest as an educator, while helping to reduce food waste. For her work, Chef Raquel invited to the White House South Lawn to be a founding chef of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Initiative! After moving to Bridgeport, Chef Raquel designed a culinary training program focusing on Bridgeport residents - A Pinch of Salt: The Restaurant Edition, which provides culinary training for low-income Bridgeport residents aspiring to be chefs and food entrepreneurs. Chef Raquel is proud to be Co-Chair of the Bridgeport Food Policy Council and an active member of the Bridgeport Farmers Market Collaborative and Green Village Initiative.
Julie DesChamps is a local environmental advocate and founder of Waste Free Greenwich. As a long-standing member and co-chair of the PTA Council Green Schools committee at Greenwich Public Schools, she has led efforts to promote reusable food service ware and other waste reduction measures, like recycling and composting. She also serves on the sustainability committees at Greenwich Country Day School and Greenwich Academy. Julie is a member of the Greenwich Recycling Advisory Board (GRAB) and is a co-founder of Skip the Straw Greenwich, a grassroots campaign to raise awareness about single-use plastics. She established Waste Free Greenwich, an online community resource to promote waste reduction and diversion strategies for Greenwich residents. Recently, Julie helped establish a municipal food scrap recycling pilot with the Town of Greenwich, as well as a textile recycling program to raise funds for GRAB's educational initiatives. She heads the waste reduction sector for the new Greenwich Sustainability Committee.
Ali Ghiorse is a convener, food justice advocate and former chef. After graduating from culinary school, she moved to the Mission District of San Francisco, where she began her cooking career, using her culinary skills to cook for under served youth and activists in the Bay Area. Committed to regional and equitable food systems, Ali also holds a particular interest in convening people. Presented with the opportunity to cook at Hillside Gardens in 2003, she moved to Marin County. Inspired by the surrounding farms, she found the perfect place to fuse her penchant for cooking, with her desire to gather people so that they could cross-pollinate ideas, leverage resources and build alliances. Savory Thymes, was established in 2005, and over 10 years supported hundreds of social and environmental justice initiatives and artists through events. Ali is a co-founder of Creative Conversations Around Sustainable Solutions and a founding member of the Greenwich Food Scrap Recycling program. She currently serves on the Greenwich Sustainability Committee and Waste Management Committee. Ali graduated from Mills College with a degree in Psychology.