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food-industry waste

Dumpster-Diving: Should You Try It?

A documentary reveals the real costs of food-industry waste, and why Dumpster-diving behind Trader Joe's is a better idea than it sounds.

By Emily Main

Topics: organic food, food preservation

Ask your grocery story what it's doing with its excess food, and monitor your own food waste.

A new film dives into the phenomenon of food waste.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—What used more oil last year, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or the amount of food wasted in the U.S.? If you guessed the latter, you'd be right. A 2010 study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology estimates that the amount of energy used to produce the 96 billion pounds of the food that get thrown away annually in the U.S. equals about 185 million barrels of oil; the Deepwater Horizon spewed an estimated 4.9 million barrels (if you believe BP's numbers), or, worst-case scenario, as much as 8 million barrels before finally getting capped at the end of July last year. The study also found that the all the oil and natural gas extracted from U.S. offshore-drilling operations could, theoretically, be used to produce wasted food.

Read filmmaker Jeremy Seiffert's post on Rodale.com's new Voices blog.

Looking for more cool, entertaining, inspiring environmental films? See some of our favorites in 6 Fascinating Films for Hot Summer Weekends and 6 Don't-Miss Documentaries You Absolutely Must See.

It's a sobering statistic, and everyone who eats, serves, or handles food contributes to the problem. At the individual level, we toss out leftovers and buy more food than we can eat before it goes bad, but the problem gets even larger at the industrial level, where perfectly good food gets tossed out at grocery stores and restaurants, by food processors, and on farms. In total, Americans toss about half of the food we produce, equal to 1,400 calories of waste per person per day.

But all hope is not lost, if you believe Jeremy Seifert, the director of Dive!, a documentary about food waste. In the film, Seifert and his friends go Dumpster-diving behind a number of Los Angeles–area grocery stores, including Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, to rescue food from a fate they consider worse than death: being taken from those who need it most and buried forever in a landfill.

THE DETAILS: Seifert's whole love affair with Dumpster-diving began when some friends were visiting and brought with them bags of perfectly good, edible food they'd retrieved from a trash bin behind a grocery story one night. "It really began without any consciousness for the environment or social activism or justice," he told Rodale.com in an interview. "If you went just after midnight, you could pull out really amazing food—ahi tuna, boxes of apples, blueberries—and it was totally free. But very quickly I became agitated and angry that this food was in the Dumpster and that it was going to the landfill, while people were hungry."

At the start of the movie, Seifert introduces the "rules of Dumpster-diving": Never take more than you need unless you find it a good home; first one to the Dumpster gets dibs, but you always share; and you have to leave it cleaner than you found it. He and his friends hit the Dumpsters every night around midnight, just after the stores close, and pick through piles of perfectly good loaves of bread tossed out a day before they expire, cartons of eggs that were tossed simply because one was cracked, plastic clamshells filled with tomatoes, tossed because one was a getting a little overripe, organic meat nearing its expiration—all of it perfectly edible. After each Dumpster dive, the pile is divvied up and the swag taken home to be frozen, sliced, cooked, and even shared with friends. And, in case you're wondering, "No one has ever gotten sick," Seifert says.

Published on August 23rd, 2010

Last updated on August 19th, 2011

Another guilty party when it comes to throwing out perfectly good food is the public school system. I have a family member who works for a school in a metro Atlanta school district and their amount of wasted food is unbelievable. If a student purchases a lunch (or receives one through the free lunch program) he or she has to eat the food or throw it away. The kids can't give away parts of their lunch to their friends or save it - even the prepackaged items that could be reused must be eaten or trashed. The after school care programs are even worse. All the kids in the program get a free snack every day - usually juice or milk and a prepackaged snack like chips or cookies. Every kid has to take a snack, whether they want it or not. If they don't eat it, they have to throw it away. There is no putting it back in the kitchen and saving it for another day. Perfectly good food, nowhere near expiration, is just thrown out. Why? Their food programs are federally funded and run, so their participation requires throwing away all uneaten food the day it is served. That is completely ridiculous, and astonishing that a federal food program would operate in this way.

the 5 Rs - a bad recycling experience

Posted on August 23rd, 2010 by grannysue

Note that not ALL employees in all stores "get it." I am an avid gardener in Baltimore and asked the produce man if I could take home a box of stuff destined for their trash. "Sure! Go ahead as it's that much less I have to haul out," he happily replied as he loaded a box of veggie trimmings and bruised produce onto the bottom of my cart. I finished shopping, paid only to be stopped at the exit by big, burly security guard.

He was extremely rude AND LOUD, accusing me of stealing even after I told him the man in produce GAVE me the box of stuff. He refused to let me out of the store with the box of garbage, saying I might eat it, get sick and sue the store!! Even after the produce manager 'cleared' me, the security guard refused to let me out of the store saying, "I looked in the box. There is an apple in there that looks good to me and apparently this lady is trying to get out of the store without paying for it!"

I realize the guard was trying to do his job and I had not searched through the garbage to see what was in the bottom of the box figuring if it was thrown out by the produce people, it must not be 'for sale'. I was extremely embarrassed to be accused of stealing AN APPLE that was covered up by cabbage leaves, corn husks and wilted lettuce!

So, fellow recyclers, if you want 'goodies' from a store to compost, follow my advice and check with store MANAGERS and get in writing that 'food' garbage from the produce department can be taken out the front door!

So much more than food!

Posted on August 23rd, 2010 by Jean Nick

As a long-time aficionado of curbside trash harvesting and occasionally dumpster diving (out in rural America actual dumpsters are few and far between) I've scored more furniture, baby gear, appliances, kitchen stuff, garden tools, construction materials, clothing, sporting goods, and much more -- some almost new, some in need of a simple fix -- than I can even begin to remember. It is simply staggering and appalling to me that people throw so much perfectly good stuff out when there are charities to donate it to (some will even pick up) if you don't know anyone who could use it and local FreeCycle.org online groups just about everywhere (online groups where you can offer or find useful stuff that would otherwise go to the landfill). If all else fails a "free" sign on useful objects next to the trash at the end of the lane empowers shy passersby to help themselves (some cities and neighborhoods have laws against this). Every otherwise-to-be-discarded item that get reused prevents the need for manufacturing and shipping a new item, saving energy, resources, and cutting pollution. Practice the 5 Rs: Reduce - Reuse - Repair - Rent - Recycle!

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food-industry waste

Dumpster-Diving: Should You Try It?

A documentary reveals the real costs of food-industry waste, and why Dumpster-diving behind Trader Joe's is a better idea than it sounds.

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