This past weekend marked the third week in a row that I’ve been a part of a small central California community food rescue operation, a major component of the ‘hippie commune’ I’ve been staying at this month, in exchange for several hours of work a day. But whereas in the past I had just helped with all of the sorting of the food on Sunday, this time I took part in the actual food rescue operation on Saturday, which turned out to be an amazing experience.
As I discovered during my time volunteering at a Montana food bank, there is no shortage of food in this country with an entire third of America’s food production being wasted or thrown away.
Needless to say, opportunities for rescuing food in western society abound, and food rescue can form a key aspect of any self sustainable lifestyle as I’ve been learning firsthand these past several weeks. The top photo shows just how much good useable food can be rescued in just one small city with one truck/trailer and a handful of eager volunteers in just one day - and that was after sorting through all the bad food going straight to the chickens or compost piles!
Every single week the property owner here and a handful of volunteers from among the temporary residents pile into an old Suburban fitted with a small utility trailer and head into the small city of Merced, California for the weekly food rescue operation, and this time I joined in for the experience.
First we stop by a few Starbucks’ and pick up whatever used coffee grinds they have on hand, to be used in the community compost toilets after each use. Then we head to the dollar store dumpster for some dumpster diving, by far the most enjoyable and liberating experience for me.
It’s one thing to know about food waste, and another thing entirely to see this food waste firsthand with your own eyes! I couldn’t believe how much good food was being thrown away, and this was just one dumpster from one store in one tiny city in one western country among many... It felt so great to be helping save good food otherwise heading for a landfill and so liberating to fearlessly jump into a dumpster full of food to do so, but at the same time it is incredibly sad to realize the massive scope of food waste this dumpster represents. Thankfully there are plenty of food banks and individuals out there doing their part to help rescue this mass quantity of food that would otherwise be destined for the dump.
Besides struggling to find good solid footing on anything other than the good useable food, it turns out dumpster diving is incredibly simple, and easy, once you’ve found an open dumpster without a lock on it to sift through. There was no need to do any sorting through the disgusting garbage, we just grabbed whatever good stuff we could from the top few layers, and there was plenty of goodies to grab from. We found excellent condition strawberries, both bell peppers and hot peppers, Chex mix and other tasty snacks, pumpkin pies, pineapples, coconuts, and a variety of other foodstuff. All in all it was a productive dumpster dive that would require minimal sorting back at the house - six large grocery bags worth of food gathered in just five minutes!
After completing our mission, I couldn’t help but take a selfie before climbing back out into civilization :)
Then after the dumpster it was time to hit up the local farmer’s market or Mexican market, where we meandered through the market asking vendors for any reject produce or leftovers for the chickens. As the vendors packed up, we’d collect little wagon loads of whatever was given us, some of which would be good enough even for human consumption, with the chickens feasting on the rest. In total there’s a good trailer load of food saved every week here, sometimes a little larger or smaller depending on the day.
It’s always a job to sort through it all, though, the price that must be paid for so much free food. It’s definitely a great gig for a small community, as the food sorting goes quickly with several people working on it. This is definitely the grossest part of the whole operation sorting though all the moldy and mushy food to find the useable stuff, but it’s also the most exciting as the boxes of good food stacks up and the chickens enjoy sifting through all the new produce.
Many people frown upon dumpster diving as a dirty activity reserved for the homeless and the most desperate among us, but as I’ve now both seen and experienced, this activity can also serve as an amazingly productive means of achieving a self sustainable lifestyle while cutting down on overall global food waste at the very same time.
And whether its gallons of orange juice, a massive bowl of salsa or endless guacamole, the tasty rewards last until the very last fruits and vegetables begin turning and must be given to the chickens, completing the cycle of recycling.