I feed my hubby from the bin!
One man’s trash is another woman’s dinner!
Lifting the lid of a large bin at the back of a supermarket, my eyes fell on a tray of juicy grapes. ‘Bingo!’ I beamed to my husband Ciarán, 39. He popped his head out of a smaller bin.
‘Great stuff!’ he replied, extracting a bottle of wine.
The fruits of our labour were as good as new. Just dumped because they were a couple of days out of date or the label was damaged.
It was 2018 when I’d first heard of dumpster diving.
‘We eat like kings – pizza, pastries, ready meals, the lot,’ a friend told me.
Reclaiming and eating discarded food – ‘freeganism’ – struck a chord with me.
See, I’d been trying to live more sustainably since 2016.
I’d decided I’d stop buying new stuff. Went to charity shops for clothes and household items.
I also ditched single-use plastics, used a reusable cup for coffee. And started eating more plantbased foods.
I could see the effect meat production is having on our planet. Deforestation, climate change...
And then there’s the plastic pollution from the fishing industry.
‘We need to do our bit,’ I’d said to Ciarán. And he agreed
So after a couple of years, we stepped it up a gear – with freeganism.
After my day at work as a teacher, we’d set off with head torches and gloves to raid bins at the supermarket.
It was unbelievable what we found. A plethora of fruit and veg, bread, cereal, even trays of luxury chocolates…
Tonnes of food that would otherwise go to waste.
Speaking to supermarket staff, I started to understand more about the problem.
‘If one can of Coke in a packet of 12 is broken, we have to chuck the whole thing,’ a worker explained.
If one egg out of six was cracked, they’d bin the lot.
In February 2019, I set myself a challenge: an entire month of eating food solely from the bins. I used Freecycle and a
If one egg out of six is cracked, they bin the lot!
food-sharing app called Olio, too.
The following February, I did it again.
Each month, we ate well – and for free!
But not everyone was on board.
‘That’s disgusting,’ some people said.
But, quite frankly, it’s not. It’s not like we’re raiding kitchen bins, picking out food from leftovers or sauce-splattered wrappers.
This is all edible – and delicious!
Worldwide, we need to be more conscious about waste.
Ideally, it would start with the big supermarkets taking action.
They overstock their shelves, which means so much waste.
But, as individuals, we can do our bit by supporting local shops, growing our own and eating seasonal and local produce.
Freeganism is a way forward. Don’t shrug it off as a load of old rubbish!