“So there are three basic rules to dumpster diving:
First one to the dumpster has first dibs
Never take more than you need
Leave it cleaner than you found it.”
These were the opening words of film director Jeremy Seifert in the multi-award winning documentary DIVE!, which was shown on May 15, 2011 during an event co-hosted by YAG and the Newman Center Social Justice Committee. As the film depicted, dumpster diving is simply the act of scavenging the dumpsters to find any good, edible food for consumption. There is definitely an inherent intrigue to such an act, or shall we say, art, of recovering perfectly good food from the trash and later serving it at the table. Can you imagine eating a freshly grilled cheeseburger, or a fancy blood orange salmon dinner with strawberry shortcake dessert, all prepared from ingredients collected from your local grocery store’s dumpsters? This may sound gross, but this was the reality that the DIVE! filmmakers lived.
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| UCSD Catholic Community watching DIVE!, an award-winning documentary about food waste. |
To the twenty people who attended the screening, it was definitely a shocking lesson to learn about the tons of good food discarded by grocery stores each day. If an entire carton of eggs contains even one cracked egg, it is thrown out. If an entire bag of fruit contains just one bad apple, it is thrown out. If a package of meat shows even the slightest shade of brown, but is nowhere near spoilage, it is thrown out. If it’s one day prior to the posted expiration date (which in itself is a gross underestimate of when the food actually spoils), the food is thrown out. This is the fate that perishable food items face. However, all this food can still be healthily consumed by people, as demonstrated by the practices of the filmmakers.
The film then creatively exposed how “we feed our landfills more than we feed our country.” In a nutshell, the United States throws out 263 million pounds of food each day while millions across the nation struggle to find their next meal. This is where we as a community can step in to help. After the documentary was shown, we introduced our project dubbed, “Bridging the Food Gap,” and our mission to mitigate hunger by mitigating food waste. The film inspired our plan of action, which involves getting our local grocery stores to redirect food from their dumpsters to the hungry people in San Diego. And this doesn’t just mean the homeless. Low income families, refugees, migrant workers, senior citizens, and maybe even your next door neighbor, are all people who could use this food.
This task seems straightforward enough, but the film and our own experiences revealed otherwise. Store directors at some grocery stores are actually hesitant to release the soon-to-be disposed of food items due to potential liability. Little do they know there is this amazing saving grace called the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act. President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1996, and it protects food donors from this liability, provided there are no cases of gross negligence. Thus, there is hope to execute our mission, and two of the attendees at the event attested to this hope. Tina DiStefano from the Catholic Workers was present and informed us that Trader Joe’s in Pacific Beach generously donates their perishable foods to food recovery efforts. The Catholic Workers even host Friday lunches for the hungry using the donated food. Another attendee, Sandy Lippe, who coordinates our visits with Storefront Ministry for homeless teens, is also a member of the University City Community Association. She has put us in touch with representatives of Councilwoman Sherri Lightner and Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher to help us get the ball rolling on the political end. Rest assured, we’ve got some motivated people willing to help us out. Our project includes other endeavors as well, such as serving with So Others May Eat, distributing lunches to the hungry downtown, and even some dumpster diving missions. So if you find yourself thinking twice before throwing away that browning banana and want to join us as we tackle the Goliaths of the food industry, feel free to email Liezel (like a gazelle) at liezel.labios@gmail.com . Help bridge the food gap.
-Liezel
