DIVE!

I do believe it is true that the Bonnaroo Arts and Music Festival has something for everyone. Last year, while literally chilling in the movie tent, my friends and I watched a documentary called DIVE! You would think this would be in tone with some abundance of water. But no on the contrary, this is a film about dumpster diving.

During college I had heard of students partaking in this excursion after dorm move out, to procure unwanted items. Yet the items in this film revolved around dumpster diving outside of grocery stores and not just any grocery stores, Trader Joes, Whole Foods and other branches in the California region. It is quite surprising the amount of food that we as Americans throw out each year, month, week and day.

While you may think, “why would anyone eat food from the trash?” the premise of it is simple. When rummaging, most of the food is in big, plastic trash bags in which the food inside is still in the original container or individual plastic bags. Some of the food which has been thrown out is either past the expiration date or one item in a container is bruised, such as one bruised tomato in a cart of 4, these are grounds for being thrown out. Although these terms seem reasonable for a grocery store to still keep in business, there are many people who go hungry many, many nights because they do not have the money to spend on food. The shame is most of the food which is disposed is still very much usable.

When I lived in Sylva, we had a local community restaurant that would cook and serve food to the local patrons in need of a cooked meal. If you are wondering, yes it was a soup kitchen. Most of the food had been donated by the community garden, food-drives, Manna food bank and surprisingly enough, Wal-Mart.

There are rules that dumpster divers follow:

·         Leave it cleaner than you found it!

·         Only take what you can use, leave plenty for everyone.

·         Look for dumpsters which are not locked.

My thoughts on dumpster diving are simple. As long as you plan to use the food you find or have some proper way of storing it (freezer space) then knock yourself out. I have yet to try this activity but I feel that if businesses are going to get rid of foods which are still useful, then it makes sense for those who want the “scraps” to make something of them. This prevents those that would go hungry, a sense of satiety.

The term “freegan” is the practice of minimizing consumerism and practicing ethical issues. While not all dumpster diving can be practiced by those who are food insecure, some actually can afford to shop in a grocery store. Some critics believe that this practice is somewhat hypocritical or selfish. One of the practices freegans try to attain is living off the grid. Even in this day and age, this is still quite difficult to do with having to pay for utility bills and even rent. Yet, given the common rules for dumpster diving, “take only what you can use” does that really seem selfish? Especially with people wasting so much food in the US?

Just take a moment to think and possibly do some research on this topic. I will leave you with this statement from the EPA:

“Every year in America we throw away 96 billion pounds of food. One half of all food prepared in the US and Europe never gets eaten. The Department of Agriculture estimated in 1996 that recovering just 5% of the food that is wasted could feed four million people a day; recovering 25% would feed 20 million people. Today we recover less than 2.5%.”

 "Times they are a Changin"- Bob Dylan