Swiss cheese, organic chicken breasts, fresh blueberries and strawberries, prosciutto and imported asparagus. These are just a few of the food items that end up in the garbage every day in the USA.
In fact, 96 billion pounds (43.6 million tons) of food are thrown away each year in the USA. That’s 263 million pounds (119,300 tons) a day; 11 million pounds (4,990 tons) an hour and 3,000 pounds (1.6 tons) a second while 854 million people in the world go hungry.
Dive! Living Off America’s Waste by first-time filmmaker Jeremy Seifert, and made with a budget of a mere US$200, explores how American grocery stores are quietly filling their dumpsters with edible food while so many people in the USA go without proper access to nutritious food.
Jeremy Seifert and his group of friends live off dumpster diving, eating food from garbage cans located outside of supermarkets. The food they salvage is astounding, in fact it is so good that one friend remarks that he eats like a rich person off dumpster diving.
Although at first it may be a tad stomach churning to think of eating food from a garbage can, the volume of food, in addition to the quality of items Seifert and his friends pull from garbage dumpsters, is nothing short of astounding. And the meals they make are mouth-watering to say the least.
The majority of the food the merry band of dumpster divers forage is comprised of slightly damaged items and foods close to their sell by date that are thrown away by supermarkets.
“There is a certain beauty of seeing food pulled from the garbage and transforming into a meal with friends,” explains filmmaker Seifert.
Considering that food takes up more than 20% of landfill space in the USA, rots, decomposes and emits methane, it is good to see that someone is eating a small portion of America's discarded food.
“When you waste food you are throwing away life as it takes life to create food,” explains Dr. Timothy Jones, former director of the Garbage Project in the USA. Jones also explains that it is not just the food that is wasted, but also everything that went into growing it, including the water, the fertilizer, the petroleum to transport the food, and the greenhouse gases generated during transport.
It is particularly disturbing to see just how much edible meat, considering how resource intensive it is to produce, is being thrown away in the USA. In fact, in one week of dumpster diving Seifert obtains a year’s supply of meat and poultry which prompts him to go buy a secondhand freezer to store the excess. Considering that the US practices some of the cruelest methods of factory farming in the world, it is alarming to see the magnitude of waste.
Dive! Living Off America’s Waste is a poignant, and at times humorous, essay on American food waste and a rallying cry against the hunger crisis in the USA - everyone in North America should see this film.
Visit: http://divethefilm.com/
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I've found dozens of dozens of eggs- both organic and non. Packages of still-frozen fish. Entire bags of rather expensive varieties of potatoes that I wouldn't dream of spending money on. Boxes upon boxes of strawberries, grapes, blueberries, tomatoes and gourmet peppers- usually with just a slightly squished one. I've found a lot of coffee, too, which is nice because I drink it regularly. Just this week, I scored 4 entire pork loins, a $12 chuck roast, 3 packs of chicken, a pack of pork chops, and 6 packs or country-style pork ribs- all still cold, still securely packaged and not even out of date.
Indeed the dumpster diver does eat like a king. Most of what I find is stuff I would never buy, or not buy very often, because it's normally too expensive. I find it ironic that I eat far better out of the dumpster than if I'd gotten it the "honest" way (which really isn't honest, IMO). Every meal consists of fresh fruits and/or vegetables, and there's certainly no lack of variety. I also find it ironic that, when I pull food from the trash, I feel less inclined to waste it, it tastes better, and I appreciate it more. It's also nice to be able to eat as much fruit as I want, when I want, because it didn't cost me but a tiny bit of effort. I don't have to do an hour of work at a job to pay for a few pounds of apples- which makes them taste a lot less appealing.
written by DumpsterQueen , November 16, 2010