Supermarket dumpster diving for food bounty

For some well-fed folk around Whangarei one person's trash is another person's feast, as reporter Alexandra Newlove recently discovered.

FOUR is a good number: Two in the bin, one loading the box and one outside the fence to warn you "pssst, someone is coming".

Whangarei's supermarket skips contain a sumptuous bounty for those brave enough to dive in.

For the past four months a group of 40 friends have eaten the best - all courtesy of Northland supermarkets, though no one has set foot inside one of the stores.

The group are dumpster divers and have been eating for free as a social experiment, as well as from financial necessity. They rely on the bins for their next meal and are hesitant about giving away too much about their thrice-weekly, stealthy night heists.

Yet, they are determined to reveal how the capitalist system has begun to eclipse ethical considerations - families go hungry while each day thousands of dollars of food is thrown into the city's skips. Most people's household rubbish smells worse than what Jay, a 20-something poet and musician, leaps nimbly into out the back of a Whangarei supermarket for, his head-mounted flashlight unveiling a mishmash of bread rolls, apples and smaller rubbish sacks.

It's just gone 1am and a victorious cry of "halloumi!" emits from the dumpster. Cheese is a coveted find. Other items bound for Northland's dumps this week include probiotic brie, bottomless fresh produce, organic milk, eggs, upmarket dressings, even the odd craft beer.

"It's a really interesting mix of feelings," Jay says. "I get this feeling of joy when I see I'm about to eat some amazing free food. But there's also a feeling of sadness that this food is completely disrespected and thrown in the trash."

Your average Whangarei dumpster dive involves everything you would expect from a clandestine midnight mission - dark clothing, beanies, gloves, a getaway car. "The ethos we go by is get in, get out and don't leave a trace. Sometimes you break an egg or you scatter some lettuce leaves on the ground, but we make sure all the bins are closed," Jay says.

There have been near-misses with vigilant staff working the late shift, though passersby are surprisingly indifferent to a trio of op-shop clothed hippies scaling the razor wire of a supermarket compound.

One night Jay nearly ditched a particularly prosperous potato mission as a curious trolley boy drew near.

"We were hidden behind the dumpster ... The torch comes swinging towards the compound and we're going *expletive*. [My accomplice] says 'shall we just jump the fence?' and I was like 'no no stay right there'. Luckily, he went back inside and left us to it.

"It's always about the potatoes. I was like, nah man, we've gotta get these potatoes. We can feed 40 people with these potatoes."

Health perspective Northland District Health Board's medical officer of health Dr Clair Mills is asked about the potential risks of eating food taken from the garbage. "Well, there's probably a few benefits I can think of," she counters. "For me it reflects two things: The enormous wastage in our food chain, which should be of concern to anyone, and the fact that a lot of food is unaffordable for our families in Northland.

"The risks are what you can imagine. If food is beyond its expiry date it's potentially growing bugs that can cause harm to human health, so eating it might not be a good idea. E-coli, salmonella, things like that. Then there could be some boring risks like getting cut and getting tetanus."

Mills says there is generally some "room for manoeuvre" when it comes to expiry and best before dates. "It seems criminal doesn't it, if food is going to waste?".

Jay says there is only the occasional item which he thinks in hindsight he should not have taken. In fact, the quality of the food would far surpass what the average Northland wage earner can afford on their weekly shop.

"The best thing we ever found in the dumpster was two whole carrot cakes with this amazing cream cheese topping. It was the best carrot cake. So good that a friend of ours tasted it, and he now buys that carrot cake. Sometimes it's just cut the bruises off, or cut the mouldy end off a cheese block. Sometimes it's just about the best before date. Sometimes it's a whole dozen box of beer where one in the box has broken so they've thrown away 11. We found a whole box of grapes that had tiny brown spots, but were still edible, still fresh and there was nothing wrong with them."

Across the road from Regent's glossy New World and Countdown stores, the Salvation Army food bank is feeding nearly 40 families a day.

Food bank supervisor Gay Matoe says the city's supermarkets account for about 70 per cent of the food bank's donations, though the Salvation Army pays for around 70 boxes of groceries every three months. "On Tuesday and Friday we pick up from Pak 'N Save and Countdown. Then when New World has a pallet full we go and pick it up. At the moment we are very low, but the supermarkets are good to us. When we get low we buy staples."

Matoe does not know whether any of her clients have tried rubbish bins as a source of food.

"A lot of families are struggling and in some of them both [parents] are working," she says. "They get along fine so long as the car doesn't break down or there's an unexpected medical bill."

Waste not, want notThe majority of food from the supermarkets is that which cannot be sold and would otherwise be thrown away - damaged packaging or past the best-before dates.

Dr Miranda Mirosa, a University of Otago professor specialising in food waste behaviour, says it is very difficult to obtain figures on how much New Zealand supermarkets are throwing away. "Countdown in particular has been really good because it seems they are donating most of their [waste] to food recovery operations. It's been a different reaction to the New Zealand-owned supermarkets. Countdown has a central office whereas the other supermarkets are owner-operated so it all needs to be done individually, rather than convincing one person at head quarters. "The conversations are being had, it's just difficult getting them to admit there is a big issue."

Countdown spokesman James Walker is confident dumpster diving is not something that happens often at the company's stores.

"We don't encourage or condone people taking food from our bins. Taking items from bins on our property would be trespassing," he says.

Dumpster diving is not covered specifically by New Zealand legislation, but legally, rubbish remains property of the disposer until it is taken away. Walker says the priority is ensuring the food being sold meets safety and quality standards. The chain partners with the Salvation Army and other food banks nationwide. "We also have partnerships with farmers for food that's not suitable for human consumption, so really as little hits the waste stream as possible."

The man in the dumpster, Jay, is confident that every supermarket is just as wasteful as the next and the legalities are not black and white.

"There's one particular supermarket that sometimes has stock outside stacked on pallets ready to be loaded into the shop and sold. We have the opportunity to steal that stuff, but we don't because that's against what we're doing. We recycle the waste from these corporations. We don't steal, we redistribute."