The Most Impressive Part of SOBEWFF Was the Trash
The festival's waste management program was the best I've seen at a large-scale food event
At Food Network’s South Beach Wine and Food Festival, tens of thousands of attendees eat their way through hundreds of vendors every day. And if you’re trying to taste it all, you’re going to have to make peace with leaving most dishes unfinished.
Roughly 40% of food is wasted every year in the US, and the thought of willingly adding to that can be a painful realization. While statistics on food waste and surplus at food festivals specifically are hard to come by, one report out of Canada’s National Post estimates 30% of food produced for events ends up trashed.
To offset the garbage generated, SOBEWFF works with Florida International University (FIU) — the festival’s founding institution before it became affiliated with Food Network and Cooking Channel — to enlist volunteers for its food rescue initiative.
“Hospitality is so wide,” Dr. Michael Cheng, dean at FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, told me. “And this one wine and food festival, has everything from guest services, logistics, customer service, culinary prep, event planning, execution, sustainability.”
A festival representative told me last week the food rescue numbers for 2024 are still being counted, but as of Feb. 29, more than 20,000 pounds of compostable matter had been collected. (Festival officials estimate they’ll have a final count by mid-March.)
Volunteers work throughout the festival in different capacities, each of whom get money toward a scholarship. Students on the Green Team told me they were making $15 per hour.
The program is open to all students, but many attend the Chaplin School.
“It’s a pretty interesting job and very current,” Maria Isabela Martinez, a student at the Chaplin School, explained to me while working at Saturday’s Grand Tasting event.
Javier Espinoza, a civil engineering student, told me he learned about the program from friends who worked at the festival in 2023.
“I decided, why not join it for spring break and take the opportunity and learn about [food rescue],” Espinoza said, adding he wants to learn about things outside of his major as well. “I thought it was a good opportunity to take, learn, and have fun.”
“I can get that for you”
Thanks to the volunteers, festival guests don’t have to worry about tossing waste in the wrong bin — the Green Team members are all too eager to do it for you.
From Thursday through Sunday, I saw students dutifully discard leftovers and flatware. They told me some attendees get the hang of what goes where after a while, but they’ve been instructed in their pre-shift training to guide each person regardless.
“The training is just like, getting here earlier and they walk you through what goes where and what to do in different cases,” Martinez said. “They just do a little demonstration and that’s how you figure it out.”
Espinoza said at first the crowds can be overwhelming, but then you get used to it.
“Most times it gets packed and it’s hectic,” Martinez added, speaking about the crowds, “but it’s very fun.”
The rules of what can be composted and which plastics are safe for recycling, largely depend on where you’re located and the city’s guidelines for its systems.
It can be easy, for instance, to mistake a certain type of plastic as recyclable when it’s not. And at SOBEWFF, volunteers are enthused, even visibly so, by the prospect of helping to reduce misplaced waste.
Honestly, I was enthused just watching them.
How it works
Stationed around the festival grounds are waste drop-offs with three bins — recycling, trash, and compost — and volunteers are ready to guide your hand.
Approaching a team at the bins feels disarming at first. You’ve got your trash in your grip and one, sometimes two, pairs of hands reach out to whisk it away and get to work sorting it into the different cardboard-looking boxes.
It’s both efficient and impressive.
More than once, I witnessed volunteers dive shoulder-deep into the compost bins to fish out a piece of trash or recycling so it didn’t ruin the entire bag of compost.
Others employed a different strategy for high-traffic times; a general dump bucket where attendees threw everything into one bin and the volunteer would pick through and sort each piece once the rush slowed.
A festival representative said the Green Team worked a total of 630 shifts.
Students Zara Moreno and Paola Montejo were working their shift together and told me it was shaping up to be a great experience. They said attendees were largely friendly, and most didn’t give them a hard time about handing over trash.
A representative for SOBEWFF confirmed the organization’s New York festival doesn’t have the same food rescue program. With the amount of food I saw tossed at this year’s event, I’d say it’s something they should consider.