If you're a FREEGAN or Dumpster Diver...

Hello all,

Yesterday was my first official dumpster dive. Of course, it had to be worth it. As I bought my goods from Woolies, I noticed that Bakers Delight were stacking a trolley full of black plastic bags. I knew what it was. Oh yes. The unsold treats of the day. If only they had an extra hour of trading and customers at the counter, those goods would have been exchanged for fiat. I walked home with my bags contemplating whether I should return. As I got home, I thought I'd be kicking myself if I didn't at least return for a look. I immediately acted upon the thought and headed back. This time with empty bags waiting to be filled. I approached the car park and noticed a guy in white - the unmistakable white of a Baker's Delight employee - pushing a trolley filled with black plastic bags. I knew it. It was perfect timing. I cautiously approached and waited for the Baker's Delight kid to toss the baked goods into the bin. After throwing them in, he returned to the shops and waited for his lift home.. these minutes dragged on, but gave me time to wait for the carpark to empty. Finally, the kid was picked up, but I also spotted another trolley coming.. it looked like heavy bags that could potentially squash those fluffy breads!

I no longer waited. I sprang to life and headed over to the dumpster, sprang onto the nearby trolley and leant over. I tore the black plastic to reveal more perfectly intact and protected bread than I could concoct a need for. I chose two different types of cob loaves and two heavy soy and linseed style uncut loaves. I placed them in my bags and strolled away.

I imagine the total cost to be over $20. Better yet, precious (completely unblemished) food was saved from certain waste. It was a glorious time, my friends. An adventure. A feeling of making use of a resource otherwise discarded.

If you have tale of Freeganism or dumpster diving that provided to be worthwhile or a DD/Freegan adventure you're planning, be sure to share your tale. We're not all rich here and definitely not beyond stretching what's seen as acceptable.

Peace.
Nick

 

An heroic tale indeed.

 

If you like I will PM you when its my Bin night.

 

Bread freezes you fool, go back for the rest!

 

I just can't bring myself to do that. Even though I know it seems perfectly safe (in your example) I have enough problem swinging a Metal Detector in public places.

 

We have a large industrial bin on our estate. There's always some interesting things in there when I go to take out the rubbish. Never anything worth removing (imo).

I would be worried about contaminants on the outer bag as it had come in contact with the other trash. However, I think if you carefully extract the baked goods from the original bag (as you have done) and place them into your own then it would be pretty safe. The disaproving faces of onlookers might be quite a deterrent for most people though

 

mmmm genetically modified soy & linseed bread . : you should know better ppss. stick with the plain breads

 

I am a pillar of the local community and it would destroy my reputation if I was seen head down in a dumpster. And my wife would leave me.

I would have to pretend that I had dropped a bag of bread in the dumpster but even then the correct thing to do would be forget about the bread, treat it as if it were dead to me.

My wife complains about the compost bucket I have in the kitchen, I point out that the vegetables in the sink are no different to the vegetable scraps that I just put in the compost bucket but she insists that some transformation has taken place and the stuff in the bucket is filthy, smelly waste that has no place in the kitchen, whilst the other stuff you can put in a bowl and it becomes a salad which is tastey and good for me.

I see no difference.

 

Yes. Bread freezes. Freezer space is at a premium, however.

Haha! Reputation, huh? Well these skills may come in handy in due time. I think having the ability to shrug off what people think of you based on superficialities is an important skill to have.After all, they may be happy buying items that could be obtained for free. Good for them. I refrain from laughing at people with consumer debt up to their heads (apparently that's socially acceptable) so I'd like to think those onlookers think twice before mocking the diver

If you're too proud, it's only ever going to hinder you from exploring. But each to their own, I say.

 

Your a Brave man Shiny,


In my youth i remember trying dumpster diving once .. we decided to head out to one of the local industrial parks,heaps of factories etc,
despite having a few alcaholic beverages under our belts it was still hard to do & is a humbling experience

I cant remember what we were diving for .. but i remember the security guard chasing us


Also a few years ago i was in need of some cash and decided to start the lucrative hobby of collecting scrap metal from throw outs,& whilst it was the most demeaning way of earning cash i came to enjoy it for a short while.
You would go out 3-4 nights a week and collect metal and anything you could sell furniture,bric & brac,computers etc

Its one way to make money when you got nothing but it was a dangerous job sometimes.
I made $3000k in 3-4 months but the wear and tear on the car not to mention the petrol costs took its toll.


Its from that collecting scrap metal that i learnt the true value of gold and silver,as you would find it in computer motherboards,ram,cpus etc.
My very eyes would light up whenever i came across a computer lying on a throwout because i knew there was treasure inside haha very little treasure but treasure none the less.

I even started to learn how to melt down aluminium and i built a backyard foundry/smelter,so i managed to learn a new hobby and skill which is a positive.


These days i leave the metal for others to collect
and prefer to buy mine from a Dealer

 

It is a pity that all of this waste could not be donated to a charity or a meals on wheels or something similar. It may cut down on their costs so they could be used elsewhere and potentially expand their charitable contributions to more people.

 

The real shame is that they make too much of it in the first place.

We have a local guy who gets the cast outs from a shopping centre, not sure how it works but the bakery donates it to a charity who then sells it for next to nothing that night and the money raised goes towards funding the charity. This guy buys it for one of our meetings, a couple of tear-and-shares and some nasty iced bun things. All up comes to about $2.

He probably just goes around the back of the supermarket and nicks it out of the bins and charges us $2 for his efforts

 

Inventory levels is a tricky enough thing to manage let alone inventories on short term perishables or one-day perishables. Baking 105 loaves to meet an average demand of, say, 100 means that you have less unmet demand and annoyed customers who go to the shop next door who does have stock. The cost of the 5 is priced in of course. If the price of the wheat, grain etc rose substantially then no doubt Bakers Delight would move to only making 95 per day or employing more bakers (or something) to allow new loaves to be baked as they are bought. Importantly the cost of the excess bread is in the price of the bread that's sold.

 

yes its a big waste,however i believe its because of the health and safety issues that stores have to comply with in order to operate as a business.

I remember my old lady used to get all the bread from bakers delights that had to be thrown out at the end of the day,she used to give it to her horses
but they wernt supposed to even be giving away the leftovers and it all came to a end eventually.


I remember a show on sbs or abc where a chef was trying to open up a truly independant grocery store in england somewhere.
In order to gain more local customers he was trying to discourage them from using the Bigger Name Stores.
To do this he hosted a charity dinner night and what he did was go round to all these big chain grocery stores and gathered perfectly fine produce that had been thrown out and prepared some elaborate meals from in effect what had just been thrown away in their dumpsters.

The amount of quality food that was just thrown away on a daily basis was amazing & people couldnt believe that what they were eating was from a bin(the fact it was from a bin was made known to them earlier)

Its a sad world,whereas on the other side of the globe kids and adults are going through rubbish tips just to find something to eat or collect a bit of copper money

 

I used to work for a supermarket chain in the UK, on the night shift.

The volume of stuff we tipped was extraordinary. First it was offered to the day staff for pence in the pound, anything left was meant to be thrown out by the night staff.

In the UK bread and milk are sold at a loss in supermarkets. They sell them for less than you can buy the ingredients. the idea is that once you come in for your cheap bread and milk you will do all your shopping in that store, and it works.

We used to take home and freeze the bread, we had a chest freezer just for the bread products, and it was never empty. hardly touched the stuff myself, we fed it to our pet mice.

However it was pretty cool to go home, slice a loaf of bread in half and turn it into a giant sandwich.

We never used to get much else from the place, it was pretty much just bread. The supermarket had a special shelf of stuff going out of date and the prices were really cheap on them so the customers who hung around in the evening got some really good deals.

 

Whilst I've never dumpster dived, as an asshole of a kid back in school I helped a few other kids discover the art of dumpster diving

 

You were an enabler!

Tell me, did any of them want to go dumpster diving?

 

i seen some youtube videos of dumpster diving the other week. places like eb games but over in america, people could find near new games and stuff, but it turns out that they snap discs in half and cut cords on things so that dumpster divers cant use any of it. something electronic like that could surely be donated to charity - something like kids hospitals or something.
id have a crack at it but im too scared. lol

 

My local supermarket has the bins placed far away from any place a member of the public could accidentally walk by. At night it's flood lit. They gone to serious effort to make this as difficult as possible. I have also heard of a local pizza chain installing extra heavy locks on the bins.

 

I had to look up what a Freegan was. As you probably could guess, it's not for me as (in my opinion) many have a misunderstood sense of morality (and economics) and consequently many participants seem to base their actions on a haphazard set of inconsistent beliefs.This comment doesn't make any judgements on certain actions of course (especially dumpster diving), just on the reasons about why to dumpster dive you understand.