(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Tonight on "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

- Alva's beloved husband, her second husband, died very suddenly and she was left bereft.

She was looking for purpose and at that moment in her life, suffrage presented itself.

- [Pamela] Alva was electrified by lectures on women's suffrage in New York and she had a knack for promotion and image.

To the horror of her neighbors, she decided to use her Newport summer cottage, Marble House, to make a splash for her newfound cause.

Making maple syrup is more than just a business for Tom Buck, he calls it a labor of love.

- [Tom] A lot of people don't know that we make maple syrup here.

- [Michelle] How would you describe Rhode Island maple syrup?

- The best.

(chuckles) - (chuckling) of course.

- The state of Rhode Island, it's 20% of our total landfill waste is food waste.

We think about the food waste that's on top of a heap in a landfill that's smelly with gaseous smells.

And so I really try to reframe it and say it's wasted food because once we change those words around we realize we're not talking about trash, we're talking about something that is food that we are wasting.

(inspiring music) - Good evening.

Welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

I'm Pamela Watts.

Michelle San Miguel is off this week.

March is Women's History Month.

So tonight we bring you a story about a Rhode Islander who was one of the key players in the long fight over voting rights.

Her name was Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and the expression "well-behaved women rarely make history" certainly suited her.

She was a grand socialite of Newport's Gilded Age, who became an outspoken activist, uncommon for females in her era, Alva made waves and made history by transforming women's suffrage into all the rage.

- Her friends called her a bulldog, related her to a bulldog, both because she was short in stature and quite stout, but also because of this power that she exuded as a personality.

- [Pamela] A personality that would help forge a change in the status of women in society from all walks of life.

Multimillionaire Alva Vanderbilt Belmont was an elite member of Newport's Gilded Age and a suffragette.

- Alva was an absolute firecracker, iron willed, imperious.

She was intent in her early years on gaining social power, on rising up in the ranks of high society.

In later years, she was intent on gaining political power.

- [Pamela] Alva was born to privilege, the daughter of a wealthy cotton dealer in Alabama.

She lived in Paris and New York, educated by tutors until her father lost his fortune during the Civil War.

- And it's at this point that Alva really becomes intent on avenging her father's fall and marrying a Vanderbilt in order to kind of regain her foothold in society, which she had lost.

- [Pamela] She married William K Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad and shipping tycoon Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.

With his inheritance, they decided to throw a lavish costume ball at their glittering new mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, where Alva would dress as a Venetian renaissance princess.

- And she invites all of high society except Carrie Astor, the daughter of Mrs. Astor.

- [Pamela] Socialite Caroline Astor had snubbed Alva and had to make amends in order to secure an invitation.

- I hope this isn't a bad moment.

- Not at all.

Won't you sit down?

- [Pamela] A scene from the HBO drama "The Gilded Age" is loosely based on the two high society matrons.

- Indeed, she is no longer invited.

Is that correct?

- [Pamela] In real life there was drama when Alva divorced her husband on grounds of adultery, shocking people in her social circles.

Alva went on to wed Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, the son of another wealthy family.

For 12 years, by all accounts, the Belmonts shared a happy life together.

And then in 1908... - Alva's beloved husband, her second husband, died very suddenly and she was left bereft.

She was feeling adrift.

She was looking for purpose and looking for a challenge.

And at that moment in her life suffrage presented itself.

- [Pamela] Alva was electrified by lectures on women's suffrage in New York.

After meeting with leaders in the movement Alva was galvanized.

And she had a knack for promotion and image.

To the horror of her neighbors, she decided to use her Newport summer cottage, Marble House, to make a splash for her newfound cause.

So she wasn't afraid to flock convention?

- That's right.

You know many women's suffragist prior to Alva were much more modest.

But Alva, she was intent on garnering public attention.

She was intent on spreading the word as far and wide as possible, and on bringing in as many people as she could into the movement, including African American women and working class women.

This went against the domestic ideal of femininity at the time.

- [Pamela] Alva starts courting the press, allowing journalists to document her fashions, home designs, and parties.

With the press in tow she holds the first major convention for women's suffrage.

Even Newport Summer resident, 90 year old Julia Ward Howe, who wrote "Battle Hymn of the Republic," attended in her wicker wheelchair and spoke at the event.

Alva used the mystique of Marble House to draw a thousand people to her home.

- [Nicole] This was the first time that any of the Newport mansions had been opened to the public, had their doors flung open.

There was a mile long traffic jam in Newport with visitors lining up to enter the house.

- [Pamela] She charged a dollar for admission to the grounds and $5 for entry into the mansion itself.

All proceeds promoting suffrage.

Her opulent, extravagant lifestyle was on full display.

Her French inspired dining room, the marble staircase, her collections from Europe.

- This was really the first time that the public got a glimpse of life inside the Newport mansions.

Someone asked her, "Why are you opening Marble House to the public?

Why not just quietly give money to the cause?"

And she said, "To do that, if I were to just give money, that would just be like giving a dog a bone.

What the cause needs is a warrior."

And she defined herself as a warrior.

- [Pamela] And she was.

Marshaling change through another strategy, mass merchandising.

- We have examples here of China that Alva commissioned from John Maddock and Sons, a British manufacturer, for use at the 1914 suffrage convention, called "The Conference of Great Women at Marble House."

- And she made sure they got the message.

- Absolutely.

- [Pamela] Alva would sell the dishes to raise money.

Something the Newport Preservation Society continues today.

The dinnerware debuted at Alva's second Marble House convention for suffrage in 1914.

- And on that occasion, she spoke from the speaker's lectern, as did her daughter, Consuelo Vanderbilt, who came back from England where she had married the Duke of Marlboro.

So Consuelo herself at this point is a major celebrity and a major draw.

And the two of them together spoke on the issue of women's suffrage.

- Do we know anything about that speech?

I mean, were they fiery?

- Oh, they were fiery.

In fact, they commanded the crowds that day.

For a woman to speak, especially speak about politics publicly in this period, it was breaking convention.

- [Pamela] She took her cause even further, building this Chinese teahouse right behind her Newport mansion.

Asian art was in vogue during the Edwardian Period, but there was more meaning to this structure.

Inside the teahouse research is now underway into the inscriptions and imagery connecting Alva to the suffrage movement of Chinese-American women.

Alva went on to co-found the National Women's Party.

By 1916, the group had organized what would be the first protest outside the White House.

Something Williams says was a watershed moment.

- This was when suffrage becomes fashionable.

In fact, there was one San Francisco writer who said that these celebrity women, these gilded suffragist in this period, mainly Alva, they helped to transform suffrage into the hobby of American women.

It's thrilling and it's inspirational.

Alva was an inspiration.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - Up next, as the days grow longer and the weather gets warmer, maple producers get busy tapping trees.

But what does it take to turn maple sap into maple syrup?

Michelle San Miguel recently met a sugar maker in Southern Rhode Island who gave us a closeup look.

- Any maple tree will give you sap.

I just love doing it.

I love meeting people.

I love talking to the kids.

I just have a good time doing it.

After 20 some years, I should I hope-- - [Pamela] Every year Tom Buck eagerly awaits the sweet taste of spring.

- So sap coming out of a maple tree is just like water.

You wouldn't know the difference.

- [Pamela] He closely monitors the weather.

- We need above freezing temperatures during the day and below.

Freezing temperatures at night.

- [Pamela] As late winter gives way to warmer days.

- You want to drill it at an angle.

Not like this, not straight.

Just a little downward angle.

- [Pamela] And Uncle Buck, as he's often called, loves sharing what he knows about maple syrup.

- Right about here, little bit of an angle.

- [Pamela] With students who visit his storefront in Southern Rhode Island.

- And we don't drive them in like a with a nail either.

There's more to life than this.

Every time I see kids, they're always on their cell phones and stuff like that.

And there's so much more to do and see out there than technology.

- [Pamela] Buck's interest in making maple syrup began in the 90s when a neighbor gave Buck a jar that he had made.

Buck was intrigued and soon he started to make his own.

- And then I would give it to the neighbors and they told me, "Hey, I got maple trees.

Wanna tap mine?"

I said, "All right, I'd do that."

So we bought more buckets, real maple syrup buckets, and we kept going and going and going.

I got on that maple train and it just hasn't stopped.

(wood stove door creaking loudly) - [Pamela] He opened Uncle Buck's Sugar House in Hopkinton in 1997.

But all these years later, he's still reminded mother nature is in charge.

Buck says the amount of sap he's collected this year is down because there have been so few nights with plummeting temperatures.

- When it gets below freezing at night, the sap comes out of the roots and goes up into the branches and during the day when it gets warm, it goes from the branches back down into the roots.

So we are catching it as it going up inside the tree, up and down.

But when we have two and three and four days that it doesn't go below freezing, sap doesn't run.

- [Pamela] He has more than 300 taps.

Most of them are in Westerly.

The sap flows through a system of plastic tubing.

All of the sap that comes out of these trees then goes into this collection tank.

- This year we're at 2% sugar content, so it's taking us about 53 to 60 gallons to make one gallon syrup.

- And you estimate that you'll produce how many gallons of syrup?

- The way the weather's been going this year, that would be a tough guess because this season has been... Where our volume is down a lot this year.

- [Pamela] Despite the uncertainty that comes with making maple syrup, Buck is grateful to do something he loves and on the very property that's been in his family for more than 80 years, starting with his grandparents.

- Grandpa taught me electrical wiring, carpentry.

That lawnmower right there, hanging up above the door, the push one, I used to mow this grass with that.

And then he bought a Wheel Horse tractor in '75, '76.

I still had to use that.

(chuckles) This is the amber rich here.

- [Pamela] Buck takes great pride in making maple syrup.

He sells three grades of it.

He also makes and sells maple leaf candies, maple kettle corn, and maple cream.

- And what do you put the cream on?

- Me personally?

Peanut butter sandwiches.

- You do?

- Yes.

It just has that flow together.

I just throw it in the microwave for a little bit and probably 15 seconds to soften it, spread it onto the other half of the bread.

- That sounds so good.

- Oh my God.

It's the die for.

- [Pamela] Eventually Buck plans to scale back and just make maple syrup for his family.

But he hopes his love for sugar making inspires others to be more self-reliant, a lesson he learned from his ancestors.

- I miss my grandparents and if they were alive when I started this, they'd be sitting out here right next to me doing it.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - Finally from moldy strawberries to uneaten leftovers, food waste plagues our daily lives.

Tonight a second look at the fight against food waste here in the Ocean State.

Producer Isabella Jibilian has the story.

This is part of our continuing Green Seekers Series.

- [Isabella] At Four Town Farm in Seekonk, it's harvest season.

- Definitely get in a rhythm when that happens.

- [Isabella] But Eva Agudelo knows not all this produce is gonna end up at the farm stand.

- The farm that we're on grows a lot of corn and they have multiple acres of corn.

And they'll start growing the corn at different times so that it becomes ready at different times.

But if we have a super hot summer, sometimes all of the corn will be ready all at the same time.

And then the farmer doesn't have sufficient customers or grocery stores or whatever, that can actually move that much corn that quickly.

So they'll just have more corn than they literally know what to do with.

- [Isabella] And that's not the only problem.

- Sometimes the food that gets left in the field is a little too big or a little too small.

If it's too big, it might not fit in a box.

For example, a cauliflower will grow to the size of your torso if you let it.

For processing, like if you're selling potatoes to a french fry factory, they need those potatoes to be a certain size and shape and weight to be able to work within the machinery.

- [Isabella] So after months of tilling land, sowing seeds, and tending to crops, this extra produce will ultimately die on the vine.

- Food waste is a very big problem in the US and everybody eats.

And so it goes well beyond what we're putting into our landfills because 30% of food is wasted or lost before it even gets to the retail or distributor.

But they're both talking about economics, right?

- [Isabella] The problem is a subject of fascination for Dawn King, a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies at Brown University's Environmental Sciences and Studies department.

- They also say pollution is a sign of waste.

- Why are we seeing waste happen on farms?

- We're very mechanized.

And so machines are actually specifically designed, many of them, to only harvest the top two thirds of a plant.

- [Isabella] That's because farmers don't want machines getting tangled in the dirt.

Plus farmers leave behind produce that's less attractive, what's known as grade B.

- Once that becomes grade B, it loses almost all of its value.

It's not even like it drops 10%, it loses almost all that value.

So farmers are facing this in this really bad predicament.

They want the food to go to others, but they have to pay people to pick it.

They have to pay people to package it.

They have to get it on a truck and get it to that donation site.

All of this costs the farmer money.

- [Isabella] And King says the problem goes far beyond the farm.

There's also waste from manufacturing, restaurants, grocery stores, and at home.

One third of all food produced in the US is never eaten.

- In the state of Rhode Island it's 20% of our total landfill waste is food waste.

And so I really try to reframe it and say it's wasted food.

Because once we change those words around, we realize we're not talking about trash.

We're talking about something that is food that we are wasting.

- When food breaks down, when exposed to air, it becomes compost.

But when it breaks down in a landfill, something else happens.

- It rots when it's not when it's not exposed to oxygen like in a landfill state.

And when it rots, it creates-- - Because it's so piled up?

- 'Cause it's so piled up, exactly.

You piled on top of each other, so none of it is exposed to air, and so it does the exact opposite of compost.

It turns into methane, right?

You're having a festering methane pile that is 25 times more potent than CO2.

- [Isabella] And that's what we're seeing when we see those pipes that are sticking out of a landfill.

- [Dawn] Yes, yes.

- Those are to let out the methane?

- Yes.

- [Isabella] "So much food is thrown away, King says, "because agribusiness and farm subsidies make food less expensive in America than in other countries."

- I always tell people, "Think of the last time you went to maybe your local butcher and got like a really nice steak, like a T-bone, like a really expensive steak.

Who ever wastes that steak, right?"

- [Isabella] Another culprit, those use by dates that we all live by.

- A lot of people don't realize that expiration dates are not set by the US government.

There's actually, except for baby formula, baby formula is the only food product that actually has a mandated best by date.

Sometimes it says sell by, sometimes it says best by.

Sometimes it just has a date.

- [Isabella] When food hits that date, it doesn't necessarily mean it has expired.

King says they describe how long manufacturers guarantee the quality of food, and she says they often put dates earlier to encourage more purchasing.

- There's actually a labeling problem in the United States as well that people throw away things that they think are bad and it's really not that way.

- The average store throws out anywhere from 5 to $10,000 worth of food every day.

And that food's anywhere from three days to sometimes weeks before the sell by date.

- [Isabella] Josh Domingues is the founder and CEO of the company Flashfood.

- It's not just a story of the big bad retailer, it's also consumers.

If we go buy a watermelon and there's one on the shelf, as consumers, we assume it's the worst one.

So the grocer has to overstock the shelf so that we get selection.

- [Isabella] Domingues came up with an idea, take the perfectly edible food that is culled from supermarkets, like a nicked pepper or meat that is within three days of its used by date, and create an app-based market for it.

The result, Flashfood, where customers can buy today's deals and pick them up from special purple fridges.

- Then in terms of the volume, we've diverted over 50 million pounds of food that would've likely ended up in landfills.

- [Brandon] A big rule is no seeds on your board.

- [Isabella] Just as Flashfoods customers get creative with their baskets of produce and cuts of meat, so does Chef Brandon Lewis.

- We teach snout to tail cookery, so we're using every part of the animal.

- [Isabella] At Johnson and Wales University Lewis teaches future restaurateurs about how to avoid wasting food.

It's a reaction to the waste that normally happens at restaurants.

He says, "Catering requires full platters that are routinely refreshed.

Large portion sizes mean that lots of food gets left on the plate.

And then there are all those choices."

- We've all been to restaurants where the menu just goes on and on.

You're like, "Wow, so many items."

Well, if they don't have heavy foot traffic, a lot of that food could be going to waste.

- [Isabella] On this day, at Johnson and Wales, Lewis is teaching his students to cook sustainably by improvising with what's available and seasonal.

Each student must draw a slip of paper with mystery ingredients.

Their assignment, create a delicious dish in an hour while minimizing food waste.

(pot clanging) - [Brandon] All right, you have 15 minutes.

- [Isabella] One student is assigned beets.

The tops and stalks become pesto and pickles.

Another, normally a pastry student, worries over what to do with beef neck.

- You could be helping your farmer by using off cuts of meat.

So for instance offal, which is like organ meat or even beef tongue, those things are delicious.

If everyone's always eating from the middle of the animal, then no one's buying the end pieces.

You're wasting money.

- Liver's back on the menu-- - Yes it is!

- Is what you're saying.

- And so of course to make liver taste good, you gotta have some pretty good kitchen skills.

- And so that's what you're trying to teach.

- Yes, absolutely.

- Is this waste?

- [Isabella] Emma Albertini, a junior, is given leftover beans and sweet potatoes.

- [Emma] Definitely stressful when you don't get to pick what you're gonna be making.

- [Isabella] She purees the beans and sweet potatoes into a stew, adding in parsnips, maple syrup, and juniper berries.

Then she crisps the parsnip skins into a garnish.

- I got another 10 minutes, so I think I got it.

- [Isabella] To top it off she makes Native American fry bread from scratch.

- I'm excited to see how this turns out.

I really have no idea.

- Chef?

- Yep.

- I have a dish for you.

Yeah, the soup's seasoned with just maple syrup and juniper berries.

- Well, the salt's good.

It's crispy and it's pillowy.

I mean, it's really good fry bread for the first time.

- Thank you.

- [Isabella] For Chef Lewis, his class is a microcosm of a larger change happening in restaurants across the country.

- Back in like the 90s, if a chef wanted zucchini blossoms in February, so they would ship them in from Israel in a clamshell for a hundred dollars a pop.

That's a little, you know, a little extreme.

A little ridiculous.

This idea that a chef was this sort of top-down leader of the food system, someone who demanded ingredients brought to them, that age is gone.

- [Isabella] Instead fine dining has embraced farm to table.

It's all part of an effort to decrease the emissions of what we eat and avoid the destructive impact of filling our landfills with food.

- Rhode Island as a state more than any other state, we have one landfill and it's gonna fill by 2033, 2034.

And that's a very big problem for us because we don't have anywhere else to put it.

One solution, right, is to get that 20% of the food scraps out of the landfill.

- [Isabella] One way to do that, start municipal composting programs.

At present, those are few and far between.

- At least 90% of total food scraps in the United States go straight to landfills.

- [Isabella] Another way, turn food into fuel.

This plant in Freetown, Massachusetts takes everything from apples to the coffee in K-cups from over 200 grocery stores across New England.

The tons of food are decomposed without air producing methane gas, but rather than polluting, it's captured to generate electricity.

It's an emerging industry in the US, but is more common throughout Europe and in China.

Though technology for dealing with wasted food is expanding, back at Four Town Farm, Eva Agudelo employs an old world solution to this problem.

- The first mention of gleaning is actually in the Old Testament in the Book of Ruth.

So it goes back, you know, thousands of years.

- It's not new tech.

- It sure is not, no.

People are like, "How did you come up with this idea?"

And I'm like, "Oh, I really did not."

- [Isabella] Gleaning is the act of harvesting the extra produce left in the fields.

Through her program, Hopes Harvest, Agudelo and her team mobilize volunteers to pick these leftovers.

How much have you guys harvested so far, and how much are you planning on harvesting?

- So we're already past probably about 400 pounds of corn, and we will probably get over a thousand pounds.

- [Isabella] The fruits of their labor are donated to food banks and hunger relief organizations.

And across the country there were over 250 gleaning and food recovery groups doing this work.

At Hopes Harvest Agudelo has seen her project take root.

- We have grown so much in the last few years since we started in 2018.

That first year we harvested 36,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables, and last year it was up to 250,000 pounds.

- What motivates you to work on this issue?

- When I was a kid, so my mom was a single parent and she worked full-time, and there were a lot of times where she was skipping meals so that I had enough money on my lunch card to eat.

And you don't forget that, and you don't forget what that feels like.

It's not okay for people to be having that experience if there's enough food to go around.

No one should have to feel that way.

People, until they come out and actually see in the field and see what it looks like, don't realize how much abundance there actually is and how prolific the earth really is in giving us this abundance.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

Until then, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook and visit us online to see all of our stories in past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Thank you and goodnight.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)