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Confessions of a skip-dipper

Food wastage in the Western world is a huge problem, which is one reason this anonymous bin-skimmer is taking a stand and reusing thrown-away goods. And she's certainly not the only one.

Anonymous

Dumpster divers reclaim discarded food from supermarket skips.
Dumpster divers reclaim discarded food from supermarket skips.Michael Clayton-Jones

"If you were a real dumpster-dipper,'' my husband said to me one Christmas Eve after we had sat in our car for more than half an hour waiting for a supermarket worker to finish tossing trays of meat into an outdoor rubbish bin, ''you would just go and take it back out in front of him.''

But I didn't yet know whether I was a real dumpster-dipper (and my husband certainly wasn't), so we went on waiting. We watched (me excited, he exasperated that I had sold this as a quick trip) as a whole trolley full of lamb fillets, porterhouse steak, chicken breasts, chops, mince, sausages was scanned then discarded, package by package.

When finally the worker's trolley was bare and the worker himself had retreated behind a steel roller door (our children by now ringing us from home wondering where we had got to as they hung out their stockings), I slipped over to the bin.

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I had been going through supermarket waste for more than a year by then, but so much meat was in that eastern-suburbs skip - all plastic-wrapped and with use-by dates three days hence - that it really was Christmas.

I picked out all the choicest cuts: the grass-fed beef, the organic chicken, the vacuum-packed butterfly lamb. My husband stayed in the car, mostly mortified but a little bit intrigued, and together we bought a chest freezer in the Boxing Day sales.

Looking back, I can still see that was an exceptionally good haul - I have returned to that very same supermarket on the two Christmas Eves since and never come away with such a wondrous stash. But it is not a complete aberration.

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I have been sifting through supermarket bins for four years, and while I couldn't say I entirely feed my family with my findings, I can come close. Moreover, I get food of much finer quality - organic, boutique, handmade - than I would ever be prepared to pay for. We eat well.

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And, as the best things often do, it started by chance. It was with only the most vague wave of curiosity that I once glanced into the wide-open skip of an inner-suburban Melbourne supermarket. I don't think it occurred to me that I might find something to eat. Inside the bin (and on the very top, there was no rummaging) were bunches of lilies and chicken mince. I took the flowers without hesitation and, with rather a lot of hesitation, the meat for my son's cat.

But in the calm of my own kitchen, my mind kept returning to that bin. My interest, it's fair to say, was well and truly piqued. I began dropping by the bin on my way to work, and then on my way home as well. I stopped feeding the meat I found to the cat and started cooking it for the kids. I pulled out milk, yoghurt and punnets of raspberries. I found a box of 78 Mars bars that were past their use-by date.

My forays into grocers' rubbish began to escalate. Soon I was actively seeking out new bins - driving further and further in search of good ones. I would find smoked trout, French cheese, bags of oranges, bunches of beetroot (these last perhaps a little tired, but perfectly edible).

Just as I would think I couldn't possibly find anything else I would want, I would stumble across a whole new set of items being thrown out: shampoo, black stockings, toasted cashew nuts. I found ice-cream - hand-churned and still frozen; Tasmanian cherries full and firm; paraben-free pink-tinted lip gloss.

I don't think I fit the popular profile of a bin-dipper or a dumpster-diver, or whatever you like to call it. I am not in my 20s, I don't wear old denim or waterproof jackets, and nor do I live in a squat, which is how philosopher and ethicist Peter Singer described the ''freegans'' he cruised around supermarket bins with one night in 2006. They told Singer that for them, ''dumpstering'' was empowering, it broke the consumer chain and had an ethical dimension. Where others, they said, ''can't transcend the cultural shame, for us, it's culturally acceptable''.

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For me - middle-aged and conventionally dressed - it's not quite so culturally acceptable (and, as you can see, I'm not putting my name to this). One of my children, in particular, loathes it. She says she will never feed her children out of bins. You might think that would be enough to stop me. It isn't.

It's like going to really good op shops - only much, much better. Better even than cruising around the hard rubbish - you're finding things you actually need, staples you would otherwise pay for (and in doing so, freeing up money to pay for something else). And what the freegans told Singer about it being empowering to opt out of the process of consumption is completely true. It's liberating and fun.

My husband worries that I have become overly fanatic, that my mood depends on finding a box of assorted still-chilled dairy products or a tray of ''homemade'' lasagne. But I disagree. I enjoy the feeling of approaching a bin, the anticipation of it. There's no knowing what food or cleaning agent or beauty product you might find. It's open-ended and exciting. Sometimes I've stopped off at a bin on my way home from picking up the kids from school and found something (most memorably a fridge-cold marinated butterfly chicken as if it had been left especially for me) to feed the whole family for dinner.

For even though my eldest daughter doesn't like it, she happily (resignedly?) eats it. One of the children of a bin-dipping friend of mine (and it must be said that lots of the people I have told now do it as well) refuses point blank to consume anything from a bin. It has caused the most heated arguments. Which brings us to the ethical dilemma of whether you should always reveal the provenance of food sourced from bins to any guests you feed it to.

In truth, I don't always, though I am conscious that this is not quite proper, for there's no denying that some people find it completely gross. They imagine listeria festering in the cheese, rodents crawling over the bread; they think of slime and stench, filth and contamination.

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But if I have gone to the trouble of cooking a meal with ingredients collected from bins, I often find it easier not to speak up to everyone. With some of my friends, I see it as a case of what they don't know won't hurt them.

And I do feel very strongly that it won't hurt them. These bins are clean. I only take meat and dairy that is still cold, most of the food is securely wrapped and the expiry dates have only just passed - if they've passed at all. Sometimes it's simply a case of damaged packaging.

I know I could go and buy the ingredients should I be cooking for those who might not approve, but I can't bring myself to pay for goods that I can find for free. I have spoken to other dumpster-dippers about this and they all agree that once you get a taste of finding food in bins, it's very hard to go back to buying it. I do, however, always reveal the origins of the bin food I give away (for I make a point of never re-throwing it out). No one has yet refused it. But is it against the law?

My children wonder whether we're eating stolen goods and, more embarrassingly, whether I could be arrested and put on the front page of the newspaper? Truth be known, I have heard of bin-divers being charged with theft in Britain and, closer to home, a Melbourne friend of mine was phoned by the police after he removed food from a supermarket skip (they just inquired if he was in the area, didn't actually mention the word bin and didn't take any further action).

While it is illegal when the skip is on supermarket property, I don't imagine it is breaking the law to rifle through the bins of smaller shops (bakeries and delis spring to mind here) that put their rubbish on the public footpath like everyone else.

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But to do that, you really need to go at night. And while the common perception is that dumpster-diving is an after-hours activity, I tend to be more of a daylight girl myself. The risk with going by day, though, is that sometimes I am seen by staff. Their responses range from telling me to leave (I promptly do) to asking me if I am ''doing it tough'' (which I deny, only to find them looking even more sympathetic).

Other people have seen me lurking around the bins as well, and sometimes it turns out they're doing the very same thing.

Rarely would I have picked them on appearance alone. Bin-dippers cross age, gender and socio-economic barriers. They pull up in cars, on bicycles and on foot. Some are brazen, others are covert, but in my experience, everyone is always at pains to share. No one wants to be seen to be greedy. If I am at a bin alone, however, I do find it hard to take only some things and leave others on the chance that someone else will come along to claim them. I have been at skips that are full, only to scurry away empty-handed because of the arrival of a rubbish truck.

Bins are often full and tightly padlocked with the arrival of the rubbish truck anyway. This padlocking seems to be increasing, and while you can poke your arm in and feel around, the best stuff is often out of reach. ''Why do they do it!'' I once cried in frustration to the elderly bin-dipper beside me. ''Because they are stupid and would rather throw it out than give it to us,'' she said.

I always speak to other bin-dippers, but I've only made one real friend over a skip. We met at the bins of a supermarket in a Victorian country town where I was holidaying with my family. She told me I was the only other person she had ever met to eat other people's rubbish. She got in my car and directed me to her other favourite skip haunts. I later went home with her and drank coffee. Now she always comes to visit when she's in Melbourne.

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My friend says going to skips shames and thrills her in equal measure. She likes that she is reducing waste, lowering her imprint on the world and saving money, but sometimes she feels it's just a bit desperate. She has two children, the eldest is four, and her husband (an academic) never wants her to tell them for fear of the girls feeling marginalised.

Which makes me wonder how my own kids would feel if they knew I was writing this.

Dumpster-diving: the legal and health implications

Retailers say dumpster-divers scavenging free food risk their health and could cause expensive litigation for those whose bins are raided.

Master Grocers Australia chief executive Jos de Bruin says its members, including Foodworks and IGA supermarkets, face fines for selling products past their expiry dates. ''If we were to give it away to someone and they were poisoned, we would be liable,'' he says.

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Locked dumpsters prevent divers eating contaminated food and protect the store's liability. ''The first thing they think about is: what if they have an accident?'' de Bruin says. ''What if the dumpster falls on someone's head? Who is going to be liable?''

Food rescue charity SecondBite says household food waste was estimated at $5.2 billion annually in 2009 - the latest figures - but commercial data is unavailable. Federal government figures estimated 21.5 per cent of commercial and industrial waste in 2010 was food, which is equivalent to 1.38 million tonnes.

Woolworths, Coles and Bakers Delight say they have reduced food waste by working with food-rescue charities such as SecondBite and FareShare. A Woolworths spokesman says it dumps goods that are potentially unhealthy, such as meat offcuts. A Bakers Delight spokeswoman says this is also the case with bread products containing meat.

FairShare chief executive Marcus Godinho says some waste is created because ''we are fixated with looking at perfect fruit'' and supermarkets cater to that.

So is dumpster-dipping legal?

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A Victoria Police spokeswoman says police rarely encounter the issue and would treat cases on their merit.

Slater & Gordon lawyer Ersel Akpinar says there is a legal grey area as to whether dumpster-diving is theft. ''The argument is whether the original owner has given up possession of the item,'' he says. But police are unlikely to become involved unless the case is compelling.

''I think trespass is the real concern,'' Akpinar says. That's especially so for those entering private property rather than laneways, and those ignoring signs.

''If there is no sign saying 'This is private property - do not trespass' or there is no gate, until such time as somebody asks you to leave, you are not trespassing. But a fence and a sign are making the owner's intention pretty clear,'' he says.

-Sue Green

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