I have a confession to make.

neekz0r

I am a dumpster diver.

The law firm that I work at is upstairs from a popular restaurant chain. My building shares a full-size dumpster with them, and every day they throw out tons of food - breads, vegetables, fruits, you name it. It's all perfectly good - no mold, nothing, but it all goes to waste. In fact, nearly half of all the foods Americans purchase eventually goes to waste. HALF.

It's not an isolated thing, either. I used to work at a convenience store, where we would assemble and stamp breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs and other quick snacks. The moment they went "out of code", sometimes a mere two hours after it was created, they went straight into the garbage. If we made twenty sandwiches and didn't sell a single one, they all went to the trash. Every day, grocery stores and restaurants throw out tons and tons of perfectly good food because of corporate limitations that prevent them from sending it to a food bank, or allowing employees to take them home, usually due to liability.

A few weeks ago I was taking our office's trash out (the joys of being the office b*tch) when I noticed a giant bag of fresh bread on the top of the pile. Upon further investigation, it was double-bagged, had no signs of mold or contact with actual "trash", and smelled pretty heavenly. I took it home, made some sandwiches, and that was the beginning.

Now, a lot of the food in my diary is taken from the trash. It's not quite "digging", and I'm careful about disease and sanitation, but honestly most grocery stores, etc. will throw out well-packaged foods the moment they go out of code. It's incredibly wasteful, and if they're going to toss it, why not make some delicious meals out of it?

So am I the only one here? Do you think this is a sustainable way of life, or just too out there for you?

Not for me, but it's called "the freegan diet". It's popular up here in Portland.

maria1113

Back here in Finland we actually have grocery stores that donate food for homeless people. There is volunteers who pack the foods in bags and give them out. I think it's wonderful way to help and make sure that no food gets wasted and poor people get something to eat.

I also know few stores who bring dried bread to barns for horses to eat

Sure, we have different legal system here and companies are more safe(as are people too).

paigemarie93

How do you know there wasn't a recall on the items in the trash? What if the coroporate offices called and said "insert prodcut name here" has been found to be tainted with salmonella or some other food poison.
What if the employees had just come into work and cockroaches had infested the area this food was in. Ants crawling all over it.
Health inspector had just been there and found evidence of rats, says everything must be dicarded for safety reasons.

I have to agree with this.

bitterfusion

I used to work in Boots (people in the UK will know what I'm on about) and this happened at the end of the day in my store it used to kill me - all those good sandwiches going to waste...

I think it's illegal in the UK to go bin diving though, even though I know there are people out there who do...