Day Eight- Dumpster Dive

I've been meaning to try out dumpster diving for a while. Some friends were going (they quite often) so I joined them. 

Some things I learned:

1. It's not that gross (although it can be smelly and is not the cleanest of activities)
2. Grocery stores are the best bet
3. It's not illegal in a lot of places (but stores can incite trespassing laws)
4. The best time is at night, after closing
5. You usually don't have to get inside the dumpster

We met at 12:20 am outside of the District because dumpsters tend to be locked up in DC. Armed with hand sanitizer, rubber gloves and flashlights, we took two cars to three grocery stores. The first dumpster was somewhat of a let-down, only a few produce items and some sketchy-looking cheesy pasta that we threw back (Seeing as it's July, we were careful about what we took). There was a perfectly pretty orchid with a broken pot sitting next to the dumpster that we salvaged though.

We found bread!

The excitement started at the second grocery store- we found an entire plastic-bag-lined trash can filled with same-day bread. Grocery stores tend to bake all new bread every night, so they get rid of the old stuff. Some places, Panera Bread for example, donate this bread. Others apparently don't. There was so much that we filled 5 shopping bags and still had to leave some behind. Bagels, loaves, rolls- you name it- my share of which is now happily sitting in my freezer.

We found a few bag of lettuce (that I still haven't decided if I'm going to eat yet), a box of rice and a bag of pasta in the third dumpster. I hear that it depends on the day and sometimes there will be nothing, but the friends I went with said they had found crates upon crates of bananas a few weeks before that.

My findings

Apparently dumpster diving is a popular thing! This article in the Washington Post talks about divers in DC. There's also an organization called Food Not Bombs that serves free meals of food found from dumpsters every Sunday in Dupont Circle. There are also MeetUp Groups that goes diving together for people just starting out.

It is crazy to think that all of this would have gone in a landfill had we not gone out looking for it. And this happens every night. At every grocery store in the country. That adds up. (According to a study by Timothy Jones, it adds up to tens of billions of dollars of retail food waste each year).

Sign this petition to stop Trader Joe's from wasting food. It's online and easy, shmeasy.

Also check out Dive! The Film. Very cool.

My personal grocery bill also seems to add up. Too bad I didn't find any tahini in those dumpsters, I had to spend another $11.05 on it (expensive!) and a few small ingredients needed to finish off some recipes. For the love of god, I hope I don't need any more groceries for a long time.

Total spent so far: $222.40