Forum and Feast, programmed by This is Rubbish and hosted by CAT was a multi platform event held on Saturday 5th November. A conference by day and Feast by night, the event was hosted in CAT’s beautiful low energy and low impact WISE building.

The purpose of the day was to curate and deliver a fact focused educational and entertaining event, where the issue of food waste was easy to digest for a mixed audience.  We believe in education for change, so the day was not only to stimulate learning, but also to create an environment in which practical solutions could be discussed with a view for future implementation.

Alongside curating a diverse food waste focused day of activities and a splendid evening Feast, we did not shy away from our political messaging outlining direct proposals for governmental consideration – asking for UK and Welsh feasibility studies to be conducted into the benefits of introducing industry- wide, mandatory food waste audits and ambitious annual food waste reduction targets.

Opening with a glittering panel of experts, the audience were invited to listen to opinions on causes of and solutions to food waste from the likes of Dr Andy Rees (Head of Waste Strategy at the Welsh Government), Dr Adrian Morley (Research Associate at Business Relationship, Accountability, Sustainability and Society), Emma Marsh (Love Food Hate Waste) and Professor Martin Caraher (City University). The panel was chaired by Jill Evans, MEP for Wales.

Following questions from the floor Paul Allen from CAT and Caitlin Shepherd of This is Rubbish gave two keynote presentations. Paul Allen explored the links between Zero Carbon Britain and food sustainability, while Caitlin contextualised the political and environmental arguments for prioritising the regulation of food industries to cut food waste. Caitlin also highlighted the Feast tour that the rubbish team rolled out all over Wales over the summer months.

After lunch, participants were offered two consecutive participatory workshops where they followed facilitators in generating their own food waste solutions from both community and business perspectives. The sessions were facilitated by Cara Whelan from CAT and Sarah Woods from a local sustainable food initiative.

The workshops were followed by a screening of Jeremy Seifert’s low fi food waste documentary DIVE! (trailer below) and the premier screening of a short film by Rosie Strickland, one of the TiR volunteers, that provides and incite to TiR by some of the people we met at Swansea Community Farm, (above).

By evening, guests were encouraged to indulge in the medium and speak with their mouthsful. Over 70 people came to dine in style at a theatrical three course banquet of multi sensory delights, including live performances from Folking Rubbish and Bard, amplified by the delights of Bicycology’s infamous Energy Trailer. The experiential highlight was of course a delicious menu of traditional dishes made from perfectly good food that was saved from going to waste. The brave Feasters certainly did one thing to prevent an unnecessary waste that evening. They ate it.

This is Rubbish collected all the food served during the Feast from growers, farmers, processors and manufacturers all over Wales. Every mouthful of the delicious feast was evidence of a deeply inefficient food supply chain that can be rectified if preventing food waste becomes a political priority.

The banquet was sourced and cooked by head chef Rachel Solnick, with a team of skilled volunteers. The shocking thing is, that the high quality ingredients almost didn’t get to be devoured as was deserved, and this continues to happen on a daily basis. Good food gets wasted for a range of reasons; aesthetic imperfection, excessive harvests or gluts of products, processing plant test batches, and products that have been over ordered at every part of the food supply chain.

The event was a great success, and a wonderful way to celebrate the end of the Feast Tour with a nation wide community of food waste feasters.

Watch this space for more resources from the event to follow in the coming weeks.

You can also read CAT’s write up on the CAT blog.