dumpster diving
Jackie Parker rescues food with her husband, Craig Hargett, in Raleigh, N.C. She spoke with Sojourners' Jenna Barnett.
“We have enough food in this country to feed an entire other United States, but it’s going to waste before it gets to people’s tables. It feels crazy to me that with so many people going hungry, the U.S. is wasting close to half of the food that is produced. It’s hard to do anything on an empty stomach.
A year and a half ago, we started dumpster diving. Since then, we’ve seen an obscene amount of food being wasted. We’ve been able to feed our family of three almost entirely on dumpster-diving food, and feed other families we know are food insecure. Often there’s even more than they can eat.
Photo by Elevate on Unsplash
When Raleigh Mennonite Church decided to fast from food waste for Lent, they didn’t know that 14 days in, the World Health Organization (WHO) would declare COVID-19 a pandemic. At a time when a core group of members planned on salvaging still-edible food from the dumpsters outside of grocery stores, hoards of Americans emptied the supermarket shelves of essentials like milk and bread and boxed wine.
Gio Andollo looks for food in the dumpsters outside Morton WIlliams Supermarket in New York. RNS photo by Sarah Pulliam Bailey
As a musician barely scraping by, Gio Andollo looks to trash bins as a way of life.
On a recent outing, he carefully untied bags outside a supermarket next to Columbia University. He likes this market because it uses clear plastic bags, making it easier to spot bread, fruits, vegetables, and other treasures.
“We can use our instincts about these things and usually they’re OK,” he said. “You can always clean it well and cook it. You can make sure you’ll at least survive.”
A confession: When I first saw publicity for Dive! I forwarded it to my main dumpster diving partner with the subject line: "great." As in, "great, now dumpster diving will become more popular and we'll have more competition."