One of the BFC teams is team education. The team’s primary goal is to increase awareness about food waste and engage the community. One of our main activities is organizing social events, like the movie night on the 14th of October. We are thrilled that many people joined, and in this post, we will share this experience with those who could not attend.
What did we watch?
We watched five documentaries from a fantastic platform that streams documentaries for free, Waterbear:
- Brooklyn Farmer (trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKRXEAvpu_w),
- A meatless future (trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwDnuqUJtq0),
- A failure of imagination (full documentary – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ONu5IweGs),
- Greens for good (an episode of “Wild innovators”),
- How can we turn climate anxiety into action? (full documentary – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJkE_6rKODQ)
The first four documentaries are related to food, and the last one addresses how to deal with anxiety around climate change.
Brooklyn Farmer and Greens for good are about urban farming, rooftop farms in New York, and hydroponics under Liverpool, respectively. Both urban gardens bring many benefits to the local community, from more accessible fresh vegetables and a greener environment to learning opportunities for pupils in local schools.
A failure of imagination is about a zero-waste restaurant in the UK. We follow the journey of Chef Doug McMaster from Briton to London’s Silo. He started as a “dyslexic school dropout”, trying to apply his skills to the area begging for change. And now, his restaurant is considered the finest zero-waste restaurant in the world. He says that waste is a failure of imagination, and if we put our minds to it, we can fix it.
A meatless future is also about modern food systems that need change—particularly our meat consumption and related cattle farming. The movie presents alternative protein sources like seaweed, insects, and laboratory-grown meat.
We concluded the night with “How can we turn climate anxiety into action?”. According to a recent study on climate anxiety among young people, 45% of respondents said climate anxiety negatively affects their daily functioning. 75% see the future as frightening. 59% said that humanity is doomed. I want to add to these numbers that all attendees felt anxious about the climate too. So it is essential to realize the issue and address it when it starts bothering you. One way of easing anxiety is joining a local environmental organization, advises the documentary. And we, in BFC, totally agree with it.
What we discussed?
After watching the documentaries, we had a discussion. In particular, we tried to apply critical thinking and identify things we disagreed with or found controversial:
- Farming on city roofs seems nice, but won’t plants take up pollution? (Brooklyn farmer)
- What if you live in a place without easy access to seaweed? Can it be scalable? (A meatless future)
- Economics is an exciting aspect of protein alternatives. In order to produce enough of them, there should be big production sites. How sustainable and environmentally friendly will they be? Are they better than animal farming? (A meatless future)
- Another point is that without meat, we can not have functional agriculture. So if we shift to meat alternatives, we must reconsider the whole agricultural sector. (A meatless future)
- How does he get wine without waste? (A failure of imagination)
- Hydroponics is incredibly intense on energy. Is it green? (Greens for good)
- Our chair, Alba Saez, raised a point that she feels she needs to do more. A person running an impactful local organization still feels her efforts are inadequate to the challenge in front of us. So climate anxiety is normal no matter how much you do to improve the situation. Be kind to yourself! (How can we turn climate anxiety into action)
- There should be systematic top-down changes too. (How can we turn climate anxiety into action)
We hope you liked this virtual experience of a movie night. Please drop a comment if you want to react to any discussion points. We will be delighted to engage in a conversation with you.
Author: Marina Shimchenko
Bruised Food Club 