A restaurant owner in Oklahoma had a unique reaction when she noticed that a dumpster diver had been rummaging through her trash looking for food this past week. Instead of responding with strong hostility, the restaurant owner left a note to the dumpster diver inviting them to enjoy a free meal inside the restaurant.
When asked about the note, the restaurant owner explained that she was heartbroken by the idea that someone would have to dig through trash in order to eat and she intends to leave the note up until she is taken up on her offer.
While the restaurant owner's invitation is truly commendable, at issue here is not the loss of dignity associated with going through a dumpster but rather the fact that there is so much food to be found in the dumpster in the first place. Dumpster diving is a growing trend all over the world as more and more people are able to feed themselves from dumpsters due to the high quantity of food waste produced by restaurants and individual households.
Did you know that on average, Australians end up discarding up to 30% of the food they purchase? As a result, food waste takes up about 40% of the garbage bin. These are pretty dismal statistics considering the fact that about 2 million Australians rely on food relief each year, most of them being children.
Additionally, food waste takes a harmful toll on the environment. Food that rots in a landfill produces methane which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. And think of all that wasted energy and resources that goes into food production and shipping!
Here's another shocking statistic: the amount of water required to produce the quantity of wasted food in the United States is enough to meet the domestic water needs of the entire American population. Wow.
With this kind of information out there, dumpster diving seems like a pretty smart, cheap, and sustainable way to feed yourself. In many ways, it is a bandaid solution to the wasteful tendencies of many Western populations, but it doesn't come close to addressing the problem as a whole.
It's important that we commit ourselves to buying only what we'll eat and eating all that we buy, but there are other creative solutions to address the food waste problem. In fact, my home state of Massachusetts recently put in place a ban on large scale food waste. The ban forces institutions that produce more than 1 tonne of food waste a week to donate the food that is still usable and send the rest to a composting facility or a plant that turns the methane found in food scraps into energy.
While this type of legislation only deals with the food waste produced by sizable institutions, there are plenty of steps you can take at home to reduce your own food waste including buying less, cooking with leftovers, and composting.
Do you have any tips on how to waste less food? Let us know in the comments!
What you can do
Up to 30% of food we buy is wasted, at an estimated national cost of $5 billion-plus a year. Cut down on waste by not letting food go out of date, avoiding over-catering and looking after any leftovers.
Reduce wasting food by managing it better every day
1,878
Tonnes of CO2
savings pledged
savings pledged
