Let them eat cake… 86,000 tonnes of it

A friend who lives in Wales is telling me about Freeganism, which involves salvaging discarded, unspoiled food from supermarket bins. It reminds me of the time I visited a different friend who used to live on a houseboat on the Thames. One of her neighbours, ‘Mad’ Pierre, who rumour had it, had been hit by an electro magnet, would tromp the canal path with food he had found in the bin of the local supermarket, distributing it to the local houseboat community.

At the time I thought this was quite odd, but the food was perfectly fine, and edible, albeit slightly past its sell by date and my friend said it supplemented her supper pretty well. It was only when I was told by my Welsh friend of how he raided the bins of his local supermarket that I thought back to Mad Pierre. Was he, electro magnets aside, a bit of a visionary? A forerunner of a growing trend of Freeganism?

The important thing to note about Freeganism is that it is not a last resort, forced by desperate measures, but a considered means of rescuing discarded food and products that would otherwise just end up in landfill. It does not only provide the seemingly impossible free lunch but has a moral and ethical slant to it. It’s a political act. A choice by educated professional types who’re making a statement about having a non-consumerist lifestyle.

And you can see their point. As an example of how crazy this world we live in can be, a huge amount of fresh, edible, food (not to mention other items) is discarded by all the supermarket chains every day. Bread alone accounts for 505,000 tonnes of it a year, whilst the cakes and puddings they throw out account for 86,000 tonnes.

In a time of famine relief, the credit crunch, food miles and carbon reductions it seems total madness that such a huge amount of usable and edible produce should just end up in the bin. Items are thrown out for a variety of reasons - many of them questionable: they can be soiled, past sell by dates, a shop return, in damaged packing, or a promotional offer that has simply ended. Some supermarkets even make it difficult to take their rubbish by pouring blue dye or bleach over the bin, or by erecting razor wire fencing, securing padlocks and employing security men. So much for ‘helping us to spend less every day’, as one nameless supermarket likes to tell us.

For more information on Freeganism and to find a group in your area see freegan.org.uk. If you feel like having a go, Bin Appetit!

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This entry was written by Nigel and posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 2:33 am and filed under Recycling, food miles, Green food, Eco politics. Bookmark the permalink. You can follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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