Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Trash or treasure

Am feeling Old today - my beloved nephew El had birthday today - turning 20 which makes me, well Older than 20 anyway.
El has promised to take me dumpster diving sometime, he and friends are waging private war on waste by clambering into supermarket dumpsters and "recycling" - or um, "re appropriating"?? dated but perfectly good food. Boxes of chocolates, loaves of bread, packets of fancy biscuits... is not because they're stingy (although they are poor - students all of them), same boys won't hesitate to offer food to homeless person or clothes or whatever. Dumpster diving is way of hitting back at corporate waste and ridiculous consumerism.

Rich is appalled I wan't to do this. So wont tell him - will wait till there is football on telly.
Also will not get in actual dumpster myself as already mentioned, I am old, and not so able to clamber out in hurry if necessary. Don't want close call like prince William nearly getting run over by rubbish truck when doing homeless experience. will be lookout person, and will run very very fast if approached by security guard as dumpster diving not actually encouraged by supermarkets. Do want to see for myself though, also would like to have free boxes of chocs.

Why is there so much waste when food prices so high? Why are these things not "on special" so we can choose to buy them cheap - is high wastage driving prices up? Do you think El and his friends are wrong or should discarded food be "fair game"? What do you think?

5 comments:

  1. I totally agree with you!! What a waste!

    ReplyDelete
  2. my nephews went through a similar phase and I was amazed at what they bought home from their local supermarket! They referred to themselves as "freegans"

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a fantastic idea! To be honest, I had no idea that so much food went to waste. I know it happened in the States during the Great Depression - they would dump a whole heap of food that people couldn't afford to buy and them post guards around so the hungry couldn't grab it. And no, I wasn't there, I read about it LOL!

    Isn't there a risk of food contamination though?

    ReplyDelete
  4. What I want to know is instead of the supermarkets throwing it away... why not give it to the food banks? Even fresh produce is welcomed surely ... it can be given away that day...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Because we live in a consumer, capitalist culture and giving things away for free unless for marketing or advertising purposes doesn't register with corporations. If you give it away for free then who will buy it, all that sort of bullshit. There isn't a risk of food contamination unless you make one, be sensible, depending on your situation, if your really poor you can get vegies that you can cook (killing bacteria) and the rest is packaged, so if the package is broken, maybe not a good idea. I once scored 5 beers because one bottle was broken, 6 frozen pizza past their used by dates etc.

    ReplyDelete