Skipping (Dumpster Diving)

[lou boutin]

Last night I couldn't sleep, so I ended up watching past episodes of 'Come Dine with Me' in a vain attempt to bore myself into the arms of Morpheus.  It was a big mistake because the episode I selected involved a women who skipped: recovered food from skips at the back of supermarkets.  The contestant used some of the food she recovered to make her meal, giving the other contestant the opportunity to decide whether to try the food or not.  The food she recovered appeared to be of edible quality, in wrappers and not mouldy etc.  It intrigued me – I guess spoke to my inner eco-warrior – and set me wondering what other people thought of this and what their experiences of it are?  My colleague and I are trying to decide whether would can get anywhere near the outgoing food storage of Fortnum and Mason or whether we’d be better trying the local Waitrose.

Disclaimer: I hope this hasn’t been covered anywhere else; I did a quick search and nothing can up.

[clarion]

Some supermarkets deliberately spoil food before disposing of it.

[Jasmine]

I think that supermarket wastage is a terrible thing.

I'm fairly sure that if you take something out of a supermarket skip that is on the supermarket site then it is technically theft, even though they have thrown it away.  I think Tesco have prosecuted people in the past to discourage it. 

[L CC]

I've just spent the last 5 minutes sniggering at how Mr Smith would react if I told him I'd done this.

(It's OK, I haven't, you just wash your hands and go to your happy place  )

I hate the waste, it's appalling. But whether I'd actually go skip diving for food... 

[Kathy]

I find that going to a supermarket half-an-hour before they shut the meat and fish counters can be rewarding. If they throw food away, they have to do paperwork. Since the lads who man the counters at my local supermarket don't like paperwork, they are open to haggling. Therefore I will often find myself getting kippers for tenpence each, provided I take all the kippers, or prime beef steak with a 75% discount as long as I also take the scratty offcuts. The food is just as fresh as if I'd bought it that morning and put it in my fridge, but much cheaper.

As for skip diving - I'd be worried about contamination.

[Quisling]

I've not done it myself but I've eaten food recovered by others from a supermarket waste stream. Specifically, some slightly stale but otherwise harmless breakfast pastries. As long as you steer clear of badly damaged packages, pork and chicken you're ok, especially if whatever you rescue is going to be well cooked. (IANA food hygiene expert)

[Feanor]

Not for food, but certainly for items of technical interest.

[lou boutin]

I'm not conversant with laws regarding this or even food regulations, but if supermarkets have so much wastage, why aren’t they giving it to soups kitchens/food charities etc.?  I really don’t like the idea of all that waste, especially when there are so many people struggling at the moment.

[Julian]

I've done it.

In fact, not only have I done it, I've cooked vegan dinner for over 100 people out of it. 

I don't do it any more, because it is illegal and I'm not jettisoning an entire career over a pile of wasted beetroots, but I'm entirely with those who do.  Some supermarkets will dump bleach over the food, but others are quite sensible about it and realise that it's infinitely better for people to pick it up than for a rodent infestation to find it. 

I wouldn't skip for meat or dairy products (although I'm fairly sure that milk would be ok) but they bin piles of perfectly good vegetables and it's the growers who are penalised for their overpurchasing.

[ScumOfTheRoad]

I did not go to this, but it looked good:

http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2012/04/26/luxury-leftovers-at-foodcycles-pop-up-feast/

BTW< regarding wasteage at supermarkets, my take on this is that it is all to do with making sure the consumer is kept happy.
Let's say Consumer A arrives at the supermarket with a hankering for blueberries (or any other fresh produce). Supermarket supply chain keeps a steady stream of blueberries arriving from the airports to the depots onto lorries and onto the shelves.
The last thig the supermarket wants is an empty shelf of blueberries - the precious Consumer A is likely to be annoyed, and less likely to go around the store and buy all those other items they didn't knwo they needed.
I would guess that the wasteage of throwing away a few percent of blueberries because they get beyond the sellby date is much more than compensated for by the many consumers who have blueberries ready for them to buy 24 hours a day.

I would further guess this is unlike the business model of a traditional grengrocer, who would try to balance how much wholesale stock they buy, and try to push cheap vegetables in season.

[Arch]

MFWHTBAB and I went out for dinner with some of his fellow students last week, and were cooked a meal consisting at least partly of bin food - mostly veg I think.

I've never actually raided a supermarket skip myself, but I've happily eaten the proceeds when others have. And at work we often find stuff that's been thrown away in the recycling boxes that is edible - tinned or jarred food, some other stuff in sealed packs.  As it belongs to us at that point, we take it and divvy it up.

I hate the idea of so much wasted food. 

I think the idea of giving it to food banks etc is ideal, but I think supermarkets can be wary of litigation over food poisoning, or giving away stuff that's 'out of date', despite the fact that sell by and best before dates are often wildly cautious.

[lou boutin]

I did not go to this, but it looked good:

http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2012/04/26/luxury-leftovers-at-foodcycles-pop-up-feast/

 

[Kim]

I've dumpster dived for computer equipment and the like on several occasions, but not for food.  It's never occurred to me to do so, and it seems likely that it's mostly going to be veg and stuff which only count as food for other people, anyway.

A friend of mine used to do it to good effect when she was too poor to be able to afford, well, anything.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I've never done it and I probably wouldn't but I'd be quite happy to eat most things other people had retrieved from skips, as long as they were well washed/cooked. In fact, I'd bet they'd be fresher than much food served up in certain restaurants.

[CAMRAMan]

Similarly, Virgin Trains bin their waste sandwiches and if you're lucky enough to be in the right place, there's a whole bin liner full of stuff that expires at midnight that day. I have partaken of such delights when made hungry enough by the evening's liquid intake.

[GrahamG]

We had some great hauls over the autumn, but bins were repeatedly being spoiled or locked away in our local bin-raid hotspots so we gave up eventually. If you live somewhere fairly densely populated, the best thing is to head for the 'burbs where there are fewer poor/crusty bastards like me who don't give a monkeys about rooting through Biffa's finest.

[lou boutin]

Dumpster diving for electronics - I didn't know that electronics were disposed of this way.  Anyone know where I can get a Meile vaccum cleaner from?

[Ham]

I don't but I am not a "use by" date demon, so I would if I had to. I think the waste is atrocious. I do know that some supermarkets sell off overpurchase/short date fruit and veg to be picked up by market traders.

[Euan Uzami]

I think it's probably perfectly safe but I think getting food out of a bin and then serving it up to other people without telling them* is actually pretty offensive. Even if you're satisfied that it's ok and can't see why anyone else would think different, it's not normal acceptable behaviour and by serving it up to other people as normal food you are imposing your own, low, standards on them, unwittingly.
If you don't agree with supermarkets' policy on throwing food in the bin, then surely either getting a managerial job there or buying up a bunch of shares and going to the AGM and effecting policy change from within is far better than just going and getting it back out of the bin again.

*If you explain and give them the option, then that's a different matter obviously.


edit: Anecdote (1): I once had a job in a cake factory where one of the tasks was removing labels from cakes that had not been sold and replacing them with labels with later dates.

[lou boutin]

*If you explain and give them the option, then that's a different matter obviously.

In the episode of CDWM I watched, the contestant provided two versions of the food: one that was from skips and the other which wasn't and she offered them the choice.  Most of the other contestants tried the food.

As she was preparing the food, she showed the film crew what she and her flat mates had retreived from the food waste skips and it included multipack bags of sweets, crisps, sealed packs of bread and buns and lots of sealed bags of vegetable.  She was fully aware that her felllow contestants might not like the idea and said that she wouldn't expect them to try the skipped food if they did not like to, so offered the two options.

[David Martin]

Not for food, but certainly for items of technical interest.

Hmm.. We call it 'Wombling' but then again I did grow up in a certain era and not too long a walk from the common.

[Euan Uzami]

*If you explain and give them the option, then that's a different matter obviously.

In the episode of CDWM I watched, the contestant provided two versions of the food: one that was from skips and the other which wasn't and she offered them the choice.  Most of the other contestants tried the food.

As she was preparing the food, she showed the film crew what she and her flat mates had retreived from the food waste skips and it included multipack bags of sweets, crisps, sealed packs of bread and buns and lots of sealed bags of vegetable.  She was fully aware that her felllow contestants might not like the idea and said that she wouldn't expect them to try the skipped food if they did not like to, so offered the two options.

Did she win?

[Arch]

Not for food, but certainly for items of technical interest.

Hmm.. We call it 'Wombling' but then again I did grow up in a certain era and not too long a walk from the common.

I'm a professional Womble! 

Admittedly most of what we collect goes to be re-processed, but we often extract useable items like books, or crockery (which we don't officially collect), and have it for sale in a 20p box at the centre. Other items which aren't saleable, we may take to use parts of.

We have a large cuboid bag on the back of the vehicle for holding plastic bottles. This was made by us, out of a builder's sand sack, some random timber, some random metal brackets and two tin cans, and it folds up against the vehicle when not full. When released by undoing the bungy, it unfolds in a very pleasing slow motion action. We're daftly proud of it.

[lou boutin]

She did

[Kim]

Dumpster diving for electronics - I didn't know that electronics were disposed of this way.

Reasonably common for universities and the like.  Disposing of old computer kit or lab equipment is WEEE and therefore expensive hassle, but you can't sell it or give it away because then the beancounters get involved.  Standard procedure is to hire a skip, place it somewhere it's likely to be spotted by engineering students, and fill it with tqt.  Most of it will be gone by morning.