DIVE!

Everyday Problem

                “Dumpster Diving is definitely not for germophobes, the faint of heart and high-browed souls who look down on we who brave the cold, heat, rain and snow for unwanted items discarded in dumpsters.” (Dumpster Diver’s Paradise) I myself am not a germophobe but I most certainly do not have the heart to go diving into dumpsters.  Some people do it for the right reasons, donating to charities and shelters but then others do it just to save money and giving them the benefit of the doubt who wouldn’t want to save money. “Dumpster diving has become a hot new trend in America. In fact, dumpster divers even have a new trendy name. They call themselves freegans.”(Michael)   Incredible and mind blowing amount of foods are wasted every year, even every day.  Unfortunately a larger group of grocery stores throw it out instead of donating which is why groups of people go and spend time looking through dumpsters.

            First off, why don’t we start off with a few facts a statistics?  It’s obvious that everyone waste food even though we would like to think we do not;  whether its food we buy when dining out and we only it half, not taking the rest to go or if it is food that we buy for the week, forget to eat, and then it expires before we know it. “Consumers in North America and Europe waste about 209 to 253 pounds of food per person every year . . . the amount of food we each waste in the U.S. per year would feed us for about one and a half to two months.” How crazy it that to you, think it all the money that can be saved! It gets even more shocking when you look at it globally, “one-third of the food produced for human consumption is lost, about 1.3 billion tons.”(Webber)

            Some grocery stores throw out the foods that will be expiring in two days or if the packaging says “sell by:” and the date is the next day. These foods gets taken off the shelves and thrown into dumpsters in the back, some of these dumpsters are behind gates, and some aren’t.  After doing some research on a local grocery store, Publix, is donating to Second Harvest from stores in Clay, Duval, Nassau, and many more local counties and other states.  242 different Publix’s donate to Second Harvest, perishable and nonperishable items. “The company estimates it has already donated thousands of pounds of food to Feeding America food banks since the programs pilot and rollout over three years ago.” (Second Harvest) Pounds of foods like cheese, milk, meats, fruits, and vegetables are sent out on trucks. As I mentioned above sometimes the dumpsters are locked behind fences. This puts the dumpster divers (freegans) at danger because hopping that gate is illegal, the type of people diving into the dumpsters are the same type of people that are going to neglect the laws and will be determined to get the food.

            Unlike the above reason some people do it just because it’s easier and cheaper.  Dive! The video we watched started with the main guy diving through different dumpsters and taking home most of the food to his house.  The few times his wife was spoken to on camera she once made it seem that it wasn’t that they didn’t have the money to buy groceries but  they didn’t want to spend the money. I think that he was wasting the food by always bringing it home, this is a negative I see in dumpster diving. The main guy on the video said that most of the time the meat thy brought home wasn’t able to fit in the freezer and it sat in the house and rotted. Just because you are pulling the food out of the dumpster and its not being throw away and wasted by the store doesn’t mean you are not wasting it. 

            All in all dumpster diving is not a bad thing if you are doing it for the right reasons.  Shelters and charities are always offering room and food for thousands of people, in and out every day and they need more food to guarantee every person is fed. The dumpster divers that search every night to send food for people in more need than themselves are fantastic people.  The freegans probably aren’t likely in donating food, as defined in one article, “freegans consider dumpster diving to be a great way to save money on groceries. Others do it because they want to live more simply.”(Michael)