Solutions To Food Waste

"Your hands get kind of gross. There's dressing and cooked mushrooms and that's gross. Or if you see a rat, that's kind of gross."
"There's a box, then there's produce, then there's another box and there's produce, and box and produce."
"There are absolutely things that look good enough to buy in the store. Often I'm confused why they're in the garbage."
"You go out at night, you have your headlamps and your little grocery bags. You're looking into these dumpsters and they're absolutely full of food."
"You get over it quickly [initial distaste at riffling through discarded food in a dumpster] because it kind of feels beautiful. You're not just doing something good for yourself, but you are doing something good for the world because less food is going to waste."
"Some people just don't understand because it sounds gross. When I first told my father I was going dumpster diving, you know, he was ashamed of me ... He said, 'I can lend  you some money'. And I said: 'I enjoy this. This is something I want to do. I think it's good." 
Chelsea Power, University of Victoria, Really Garbage Cookbook co-author

Emily Kirbyson, left, and Rebecca Rogerson look through a garbage bin behind a grocery story for produce and other edibles near or just past their expiry date in an effort to create a cookbook on dumpster diving for their thesis work at the University of Victoria.   Chad Hipolito/Postmedia

During her undergraduate years, Chelsea Power met another student who had joined a dumpster diving club. As a university student with limited financial means she, like many others, found it difficult to pay for her tuition, her living costs and to be able to afford good wholesome food. People in straitened circumstances, those with low incomes -- and post-secondary students not living at home have discovered that there are alternatives to visiting food banks; visiting supermarket dumpsters.

According to Ms. Power, she has had the experience of coming across some grocers who obligingly help people looking for unwanted, discarded food, offering more than they find in dumpsters, bringing out from inside the store more for them to select from. On the other hand, there are different responses from different people, some of whom can be downright mean and nasty that someone is trying to advantage themselves at no cost by going out of their way to secure food no one else wants.

Ms. Power's attitude about wasted food is one that could be emulated by many more people, held back by a feeling of shame. She feels that the food is perfectly fine, it's healthy and nutritious and shouldn't end up in a landfill when it could be put to good use by needy or simply practical people. From that perspective it's downright criminal for supermarkets to discard food that may be disfigured or no longer at the peak of perfection. Instead of placing the food out as discarded waste, food that remains edible and in good shape should be placed on racks in back of the store to enable people easy access.

Emily Kirbyson holds a bag of produce and other edibles found behind a grocery store. Chad Hipolito/Postmedia

Ms. Power along with Emily Kirbyson and Rebecca Rogerson -- both graduate students at University of Victoria like herself -- plan to present their waste-food project and recipe book at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, an annual conference gathering in thousands of academics and taking place in Regina this year. They will speak of the frustrations and rewards of riffling through discarded produce, coming across vegetables, fruit and herbs, cheese, close-to-expiry milk layered between cardboard boxes that have been tossed in with the discarded food.

Their Really Garbage Cookbook describes the pact of an increasing group of garbage foragers living in cities, and the knowledge they share that inside most dumpsters behind a grocery or bakery rests a fount of good-to-fair food destined for a garbage heap which their intervention could free up for personal use. A 2009 Supreme Court decision made it clear that anything set out for garbage collection will not legally be considered private.

The book, still being put together, presents anecdotes, food collection guides, poetry and recipes. There are tips on how to select a dumpster (avoid big box supermarkets), when to venture out (week days preferably) and how to prepare the food that has been rescued (cleansing it with antibacterial soap), and to practise civil etiquette; to restrain yourself from taking everything presentable in favour of leaving some for others to 'rescue' and make good use of.

Rebecca Rogerson and Emily Kirbyson. Chad Hipolito/Postmedia