Northern Advocate
  • Northern Advocate home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Sport
  • Property
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
  • Sport
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings

Locations

  • Far North
  • Kaitaia
  • Kaikohe
  • Bay of Islands
  • Whangārei
  • Kaipara
  • Mangawhai
  • Dargaville

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • Kaitaia
  • Whangārei
  • Dargaville

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Northern Advocate

Supermarket dumpster diving for food bounty

By Alex Newlove
Northern Advocate·
25 Jul, 2015 02:54 AM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

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.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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.

Discover more

$460m spend on roads paves way for growth

27 Jul 07:30 PM

"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."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

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."

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Northern Advocate

Northern Advocate

'Absolute tragedy': 21yo drove drunk and crashed into tree, killing younger brother

08 Jul 06:00 AM
Northern Advocate

Signal concerns: Power, transmission quality issues disrupt Freeview service

08 Jul 05:06 AM
Northern Advocate

Man who knocked officer unconscious fails to reduce prison sentence

08 Jul 02:46 AM

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Northern Advocate

'Absolute tragedy': 21yo drove drunk and crashed into tree, killing younger brother

'Absolute tragedy': 21yo drove drunk and crashed into tree, killing younger brother

08 Jul 06:00 AM

'The consequences are with you for the rest of your life', a judge told Rameka Rewiti.

Signal concerns: Power, transmission quality issues disrupt Freeview service

Signal concerns: Power, transmission quality issues disrupt Freeview service

08 Jul 05:06 AM
Man who knocked officer unconscious fails to reduce prison sentence

Man who knocked officer unconscious fails to reduce prison sentence

08 Jul 02:46 AM
Police arrest three, seize shotgun and rifles following dirt biker dispute

Police arrest three, seize shotgun and rifles following dirt biker dispute

08 Jul 12:09 AM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • The Northern Advocate e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Northern Advocate
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The Northern Advocate
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP