Mindful Waste to Host WASTED! Anthony Bourdain-Produced Story of Food Waste

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1 min read

On Thursday, November 15th, local nonprofit Mindful Waste will host a screening of the Anthony Bourdain-produced film WASTED! The Story of Food Wastefrom 6-9 PM at the Onion Pub & Brewery in Lake Barrington. The event will also feature chef-prepared appetizers such as flatbread pizzas on spent grain crust and the Wild Onion Brewery’s own beer, all for $25 a ticket.

WASTED! is the main attraction, and chronicles the story of global food waste – 1.3 billion pounds of it annually – as told by chef-innovators Dan Barber, Mark Bittman, Massimo Bottura and the late Bourdain himself. It’s not all doom and gloom, though; the film empowers by showing simple changes everyone can make to eat more and waste less. The documentary is visually stunning, and reinforces what Mindful Waste teaches in the local community: food, and the resources used to produce it, are valuable and should be consumed and conserved whenever possible.

Mindful Waste was formed in 2015 by Barrington-area residents Jennifer Kainz and Renee Blue, two women on a mission to eliminate food waste through education, prevention and recovery. Together they designed and implemented food recovery programs in nine local schools, and facilitated the recovery of over 20,000 pounds of food in two years.

In early 2018, they formed a partnership with Smart Farm, a local nonprofit educational farm, and created a field experience for over 700 third-grade students. Kids learned about interdependency, sustainable farming methods, vermicomposting (worm composting) and aquaponics. They also learned that freshly harvested green beans are delicious!

Mindful Waste and Smart Farm co-hosted a Pumpkin Pitch event last Sunday, November 4th – their 4th annual event – that featured two trebuchets (one built by Boy Scout Troop 29, the other by Smart Farm and Mindful Waste volunteers) and two pumpkin wingers. It was a smashing success (literally), and thousands of pounds of pumpkins will be composted and used to enrich the farm’s soil.

Any proceeds from WASTED! The Story of Food Waste ticket sales will fund Mindful Waste’s future educational programming at Smart Farm and in the wider community. Jennifer and Renee hope you’ll join them for a fun and informative evening! You can buy your tickets here, and learn more about Mindful Waste here.


Mindful Waste is a Barrington-based nonprofit organization dedicated to finding solutions to the global issue of food waste on a local level. Learn more about their mission as educators, food rescuers and worm wranglers at MindfulWaste.org.

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