To dumpster dive for food?

[Fatshionista]

DP went out tonight and got a bit drunk. He turned up (on time for those who read my other thread!) with a wheelie bin full of food. He said he was inspired by something I said earlier in the week and went to have a look. The bins for the Co-Op are in a side street and when he came in he brought in eight bags.

Some things were unusable such as mouldy bread, bad vegetables, yogurts past their expiry etc and anything with raw eggs but we have nine boxes of Mr Kipling cakes, six 6 pack cokes with minor dents, coffee, cake, Daz, meat, biscuits, crisps etc all individually packaged! There has to be at least £100 of stuff in my kitchen that I regularly buy and can freeze for next week.

I know it's illegal but, my God, the waste! AIBU to consider doing this more often? I'll put back what I don't need. We're not financially stable so saving £30 or £40 a week on shopping (a usual bill is £50-60) is a big win for us.

Well just remind him that the OPs DP came home with 20 pint cans of cider, if that does not get him down there nothing will!!

In my town Marks and Spencer, after they have closed for the day, collect all the food that would be thrown away as the best before date would be the next day (so not OOD until the next morning really) and give them to the couple who run the local homeless shelter and soup-bus.

I would much rather they did this than throw it away and it doesn't seem like it is much effort to M&S as they are still doing it 4 years later and is good public relations for them I think.

Should I take a photo and upload it of the haul DP came away with? Sooo much!

Most Def!

No, YANBU imo, I was pointing out the bins literally overflowing outside our Tesco Express yesterday. Actually, you could easily argue it should be illegal to just bin it without trying to get it used somehow.

They're the first four photos on my Tumblr here: ellalavish.tumblr.com/

Those are piled back right to the wall.

There is also a big clear bag of Walkers Salt & Shake crisps and a big clear bag of Cadbury's Animals biscuits in the shed but I wasn't brave enough to go outside in the wind again to get them :o.

OMG

What the actual fuck?? That is madness

well done!

Pret a Manger gives out sarnies/salads at the end of the day if they're not sold. And they give to homeless. And they give me free coffees sometimes as I'm a regular customer and I often come out with no money!
No I don't work for Pret!
Seems some companies seem to actually live by their ethical values and promises and some don't.

oooh I'm a fan of cadbury's clusters! :o well done to your DP OP, absolute madness that they are allowed to throw that amount away! x

What puts me off is the germs and the rats! I hope you are at least wiping down all packaging before stashing it!

My son is at uni and he and his friends do this from time to time. When he first told me, I think he expected me to be cross but I was actually quite proud, especially of the fact that he was horrified by the wastage. He tends to get a lot of fruit and veg, although he has had meat and bread too. He was saddened by families who end up shopping for processed crap at Farm Foods or Iceland because fresh stuff is expensive... I love him for that (and lots of other things of course!)

"I don't understand the mentality of supermarkets. I mean, it's waste and they're no longer going to make a profit from it, right?"

Yes, but from the supermarket's perspective, obviously they would rather you went in and paid £40 for their 'in date' goods, so if you skipdive then I can see they would see that as reducing their profits. For that reason it would be a bit twattish (for instance - not that you would anyway) to bindive outside your local independent corner shop or market stall (unless you were really destitute).

I don't see why you shouldn't skipdive from a big supermarket that's blatantly wasting food though, and also wish I had the nerve to do the same .

I used to have to throw out whole uncut hams still in their shrink-wrapping when I was teenager working for Waitrose on the deli counter (but this was a very long time ago , I don't know what their current practices are). And tbf if we had to do that, the discarded meat was costed out, and if too much was being wasted, the manager was told to sort out their stock control out.

Oh, and best time to skipdive for perishables would be just after the shop closes before a bank holiday - there'll be stuff which is fine that day or the next but would go out of date before the shop re-opens. That's when we always threw out most stuff.

I'd not do it to a local shop who survive on our business. When I was a teenager I went through a foul stealing phase and I always said never from independent businesses. Some morals, eh?

Some local shops have their own systems, though. The independent bakery near my dc's school put the day's leftovers in a bag and hang it off the outside of the doorhandle when they lock up, so that people can help themselves. And this is a rough bit of central London, not some idyllic market town (only a few doors down from a branch of the Co-Op, ironically).

It can be done if the will is there. The problem seems to be more the large chains who are driven by the edicts of some marketing or PR person in a remote headoffice somewhere conveniently far away from the daily realities of food wastage.