Buzz in fast, drink local beer, waste no food

Approximately what percent of food supply in the United States is wasted each year? Is it A) 5-10%; B) 10-20%; C) 25-30%; or D) 35-40%? 

This is the type of question that will be asked at Long Live Beerworks on April 9^th when the University of Rhode Island’s (URI’s) Cooperative Extension hosts a Zero Waste Trivia event at the brewery. The special themed trivia, a free event open to all over the drinking age, is in honor of National Food Waste Prevention Week, and it’s just one way to get Rhode Islanders scrappy about food scraps. 

“I was really interested in having a Rhode Island presence involving a national effort,” explains Vanessa Venturini, co-organizer of Zero Waste Trivia and the state program leader for the Cooperative Extension’s Master Gardener and Food Recovery for RI programs. National Food Waste Prevention Week isn’t just an awareness effort; different community-led wasted food solution events take place across the country, and virtual webinars that residents of all fifty states can attend. 

Hosting a trivia night at Long Live Beerworks was the creative brainchild of Venturini and co-organizer Dara Benno, a 2024 alumni of Venturini’s Food Recovery for RI program. Benno’s idea to have the event at the Providence brewery came from two key factors: Long Live Beerworks focuses on wasted food solutions by composting their own hops and giving organic waste like spent grains to their farmer connections to feed cattle; the site is also familiar to students and alumni of Food Recovery for RI, as it acts as a relaxing gathering spot for after a field trip or after a long day of volunteer work. It also helps that the brewery hosts its own weekly trivia, a fact on which Venturini and Benno are hoping to capitalize to expand their audience; the trivia may be themed around food waste, but any hard-core quizzer will recognize that while the questions change, the challenge still remains. Besides bragging rights, the winner of this trivia contest will receive a special prize. 

A small photo-booth-style “social media contest” will be set up at the brewery for those who feel silly instead of competitive; participants can take a selfie with a prop and tag the Cooperative Extension for free giveaways like seeds and buttons. Props are all dedicated to pillars of food waste prevention, and selfie slayers should use the prop that best encapsulates their food waste efforts – there might be a “Compost Queen” or an “I love broth” sign (meaning a person is dedicated to using their vegetable peelings and scraps to make broth, Venturini clarifies). Hors d’oeuvres will be served by Brother & Moffat, and in the spirit of National Food Waste Prevention Week, there will be on-site composting for food scraps generated by the event. 

Aside from the festivities, the Cooperative Extension and Long Live Beerworks will host a tabling event with partner environmental organizations and food waste prevention organizations like Hope’s Harvest RI, RI Schools Recycling Project, and Groundwork RI’s Harvest Cycle Compost. The Cooperative Extension will have a special table with alumni who have gone through the six-week Food Recovery program to talk to any interested participants about the course and how to sign up for this fall’s session.  

Food Recovery for RI is an adult learning course geared toward those who want to support community-led initiatives and become “peer educators,” Venturini says. She started the course in 2021, and has since taught over one hundred Rhode Islanders about the food system. Her program combines online learning (which can proceed at an individual pace) as well as group activities like site visits to the Johnston landfill and food pantries. During the course, hands-on experience in food waste prevention can occur through practical classes like pickling and canning, composting, and talking to professional chefs about kitchen tips and tricks (like never storing onions near potatoes).  

The course focuses heavily on food waste solutions, introduces local nonprofits and community-led efforts like Providence’s Sankofa Initiative, and holds the expectation that by the end of the course, fully-fledged peer educators will commit to a forty-hour volunteer internship, immediately utilizing their new knowledge to uplift their local communities. 

For Benno, a human-centered designer who focuses on sustainability systems, the Food Recovery course offered a chance at professional development by diving deep into the local and national food systems. Now she describes her entire experience in the course as “so much fun” – three words not usually used in regard to food waste and its prevention.  

The fun, for her, comes from seeing an immediate impact in the system, and realizing that “it’s not that hard to choose to make a change. It’s really powerful to see the work make a difference in your community.” 

Zero Waste Trivia further uplifts and extends that community by bringing together alumni, friends, community members, and perhaps inspiring more individuals to change their food-related habits. 

The entire event, while focused on a very serious topic, is meant to be fun and uplifting. “We don’t like a lot of guilt-based sayings that come along with food waste – it’s a sin!” Venturini laughs, waving her hands in mock scandal at the idea that anyone could ever waste food. Food waste is to be avoided, but it happens to everyone and at every level of society, from individuals and households to mom-and-pop eateries and sweeping national food chains. Being negative only hurts attempts to be better, but celebrating wins – even small ones – can lead to larger gains in the food waste prevention effort. 

And for those who are trying to gauge how hard the trivia might be, the answer is D) between 35 and 40% of food supply is wasted in the United States each year.