Yes, you're going to say near the end of this article. Yes, you definitely do.
No. Not in that way. Wait, hear me out.
I know I sound crazy. But I'm not a loony dumpster-diver person either. Tonight, the whole time, I was looking at the fresh fruit I could see by the light of my cell phone and thinking, "I can't do this. It's one thing to pick up abandoned pear at the foot of a neighbor's tree, or happily swipe an extra boxed lunch at the end of a seminar. To get this fruit, I'd have to climb in the dumpster. That's way too much effort to, you know, consume something that someone else has judged as trash." That just sounds--feels--icky. You are what you eat, right?
I climbed in anyway.
This is all part of an experiment that's been tickling at the back of my skull for a while now, ever since I got involved with the FreeFoodCommune. You all may know that I head over to the park most Saturdays, put on an apron, and help Pam the Freegan distribute food that's been rescued from restaurants, farmer's markets, grocery stores and soup kitchens all across Atlanta. No one needs proof of poverty. The goal is not to feed the homeless (although it's certainly fun when we do)--it's to prevent food waste. With that goal, everyone can help.
I could give Pam the shout-out she deserves for the obscene amount of her time, soul, and gas money she pours into this project, but I've thanked her in other venues and right now I have a point to make. The point is that I've been spending the last year and a half benefiting from other people's food rescue efforts, and my modus operandi for joining the fray is predictably unadventurous. I tend to hang around late after the occasional party or gathering and offer to help clean up, sweeping the food from trays into tupperware before I take out the garbage. It's a great method for food rescue--immediate pre-garbage interception. I'd venture to say that this is how just about all of our food gets to the Commune--people have connections with stores or farmers or restaurants, and manage to collect the unwanted usables before they get dumped. But I heard Pam sigh once:
"I'm just one person, and I don't have the manpower (or the fridge space, or the truck) to save more than this. There's a grocery store right up the street, and their dumpster is a treasure chest, but we're already at the limit of what we can transport." Huh. All that food (and if you've been there, you know that there's a ton) and there's still that much food being thrown away right down the street? I...had no idea.
So I looked it up. Here's the page: http://robgreenfield.tv/dumpsterdiving/. According to this Rob guy, grocery store dumpsters are one of the most eco-friendly, practicable ways of stocking your larder around. Key points are these:
1) Grocery store dumpsters contain almost exclusively food. (Contrast this to mall dumpsters, where the potential for contamination is much higher, or restaurants, where the food is probably cooked, unpackaged, and messy.) 2) Food that's thrown away isn't necessarily bad. Lots of food gets tossed because it's at its arbitrarily-defined expiration date, because it has a bad spot, because it's not as pretty as the other food it's surrounded by, or because the store overstocked and they had to make room for the newer influx. 3) If you catch it quickly, the food is probably just as good as what you paid for in the store--and since so much food gets thrown out, the dumpsters are probably emptied regularly, leaving the food inside fairly fresh. This works better in winter than in summer, for obvious reasons, but you have the nose and the judgement to make each individual call.
* * *
My curiosity hasn't been piqued enough for me to go searching dumpsters with gusto. I glance at them when I pass, just in case, mainly for furniture rather than food--sometimes people move and leave loads of goodies behind. (I got a working sewing machine out of a dumpster once.)
This week, the scales finally tipped. I missed the Commune for the fifth week in a row, my local store's "discounted produce" section was empty, and my gymnastics club doesn't meet in summer, so my evenings feel strangely empty. I have five grocery stories in a 1.5 mile radius, one of which closes at 8PM, parking lot clear by 9. I investigated.
The first night, there were brown bananas and overripe strawberries at the top, but I left them because the flies were thick and action required more data points than one. Second day, same bananas, same strawberries. Cool, decision confirmed: I don't want stuff that's been composting in the heat for unknown numbers of days. Third day was supposed to be another investigatory run--but I found a bag of hard green pears, within arm's reach of the opening. My heart was in my chest, but I took it home, and washed all the pears thoroughly. I found the rotten one at the bottom of the bag, the reason why it'd been trashed; the others were still hard and green and perfect to withstand a good scrubbing. I nibbled one a day or so later. Still hard, really, but I found that it hadn't absorbed dumpster flavor, so I put its companions a little closer to the other fruit on my shelf and let them ripen.
Tonight, I looked down at 20 pounds of nectarines and faced a decision: Do I really know enough about this dumpster to be okay emptying it?
Well, I was going to shower anyway. I can always throw the fruit away again when I get home. I'm on a bike, so I can't take all the fruit anyway--so I'll just take the really nice-looking dumpster fruit, and see how it goes.
Did I really just say that? First sign of insanity--my words don't make sense.
I cleaned up a bit around the dumpster, so I fulfilled my responsibility as an upstanding diver of good breeding and proper etiquette. Most of the nectarines were hard and unripe again; I disposalled the ones that (as with the pears) had condemned their comrades to the bin. This is what's left:
I don't know if you can tell, but that's a freaking ton of nectarines. That bowl is so tall it barely fits on my second fridge shelf, and it's stacked double-high. This photo only accounts for the nectarines that didn't have any bad spots or blemishes; those got chopped up so the good parts could go into a fruit salad container. In front are the odds and ends that I picked up alongside the nectarine bags; behind is the webpage of Rob Greenfield's surprisingly accurate blog.
So, I know what you're thinking. This girl is eating straight out of the dumpster. She needs help.
Yes. Yes, I do. Can anyone take some nectarines?
