Posted on 01/05/2023 12:44:49 PM PST by nickcarraway
‘I got £10,000-plus of food for free’: the bin diver making the most of thrown-away groceries As supermarket prices soar, some Britons are hunting out food that would otherwise go to waste. We talk to one of them
Tim Barratt* lives on a diet of organic steak and ethically reared £25 roast chickens, asparagus and fresh pasta costing £7 a pack. But the 22-year-old hasn’t spent any money on food – with a few exceptions such as ground coffee, spices and rice – for a year and a half. He has eaten the equivalent, he thinks, of upwards of £10,000 of mainly top-end fare, for free.
All his dinners (or “binners”, as he likes to call them) with friends, breakfasts and packed lunches are made up of ingredients scavenged from bins.
Commuting home in the evenings, the engineer from Edinburgh scoots round the back of delis, cafes and shops to grab the best discarded produce before it is picked up by rubbish collectors later in the evening.
This often involves crawling head-first into a wheelie bin and washing bin juice off packets, so “it can get quite gross” – although Barratt says he has a strong stomach and that, most of the time, once unwrapped, the food is “perfect”.
It might be an extreme and possibly legally dubious way of reducing your grocery bill at a time of soaring food price inflation but bin diving – AKA “skipping” and “freeganing” – has become a popular undercover activity among individuals trying to save money and rescue still-fresh food, as well as those who take a political stance against food waste and overconsumption.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Fantastic! Now try this in Bombay, or Lagos!
Some grocery stores have locked their dumpsters because divers have left trash strewn about afterwards.
Britain - Where even the garbage isn’t safe!
Well - they’re not puffy yet.
Check Local Laws for “Garbage Ordinances”
Dumpster diving is technically legal in all 50 states. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled in State of California v. Greenwood that searching trash is legal as long as it does not conflict with any city, county, or state ordinances.
Consider the following example of such an acceptable form of dumpster diving. Let’s say that someone is looking through the trash bag that you left on the curb outside your house, where you typically leave trash for pick up by waste management personnel. Given that the curb outside your house is a public space, you can no longer reasonably expect someone to observe the privacy of that place where you left your trash. In other words, it becomes “public domain,” and the Fourth Amendment no longer applies. Under the Fourth Amendment, intrusions into private spaces tend to become a problem.
This means most garbage can be searched or taken by the police, a neighbor, waste removal employees, or a stranger.
Knock your socks off, BinBoy.
Can’t be a dropoff in quality, it’s like they say, Hell is where....
The food is British
The cars are French
The police are German
The lovers are Swiss
And the whole thing is run by Italians
Sure... you can make TONS of $$ if you no longer care about your dignity.
In the State of Washington, law enforcement is not allowed to dig through your trash even if it is in the public right of way.
In the State of Washington, law enforcement is not allowed to dig through your trash even if it is in the public right of way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.