What do you do to minimize food waste in your house?

Jen Rustemeyer has. She and her life/business partner, Grant Baldwin, have spent the last few years wading through garbage – sometimes literally, but also in a broader philosophical sort of way.

In their first documentary, The Clean Bin Project, the B.C. couple committed to living as waste-free as possible for one year, to buying no more landfill-bound stuff. This idea resonated with people. Rustemeyer and Baldwin were invited to schools to complete waste audits and were blown away by how much perfectly good food was being tossed in a country where 1 in 10 people is food insecure.

It was an a-ha moment for the couple. In sorting trash with students, they’d found the impetus for their next film: Just Eat It.

For six months, Rustemeyer and Baldwin would live solely off rescued food – that is food that would otherwise be thrown away. Somewhere along the cycle – from the farm to your stomach – almost half of all food produced ends up in the trash. Rustemeyer and Baldwin partnered with us, Knowledge Network, to make a film about this problem that’s hard to overstate.

Now that the film is finished, they’re getting ready for the festival circuit. We stopped by their home in East Vancouver for a visit – and got to meet the latest addition to their family, Arlo, in the process.

Here’s the couple (and a cooing baby Arlo) talking with Knowledge’s Brielle Morgan about waste, what we can do about it, and the implications of signing on to a totally immersive film project with your significant other.