A Freegan Dumpster Diving Blog

parental diving

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now we have a fridge full of bread:

12 spicy buns
9 bread rolls
12 organic ciabatta rolls
4 breads (a yoghurt bread, a sandwich loaf, rye bread )
2 celery
5 organic carrots
lemons
flowers
small pink raincoat

you can tell i didn't go on this dive because of the pink raincoat.

drunken solo diving

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i'd be lying if i said we always do it by the book. sometimes you're just too drunk or excited to follow the rules properly. i was coming back from a very cheap night out and figured it was the perfect time to check our new favourite dumpster. it belongs to a posh supermarket, but is situated right in the middle of a residential courtyard, making things tricky.

it was so late that all the courtyard lights were off, which is good, because as i was trying to find the right bin bag, carefully untying its knot, someone walked right past and didn't even notice me. but since there were no lights i decided, perhaps wrongly, that it'd be easier to just take the whole lot. so i did. and it was heavy too.

i suppose the good thing about this supermarket is a large proportion of what they throw out is actually bad (gr, mouldy bread). so after lugging it all home i had to bin a lot of it (again). it was worth it though:

4 half cooked baguettes
2 litres organic milk
1 litre juice
250g coffee beans
coffee cream
18 pitta breads

there was a large box marked with a cross and containing many tubs of "salad" (disgusting creamy mayonnaise stuff) too, but there was obviously something unidentifiably wrong with them, so it was all chucked. all 30+ tubs. and there was some tasty looking slabs of meat. yeah, real tasty. dripping yellow shit all over everywhere. exactly what i want in my kitchen.

media project reconnaissance mission

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the mission's objective was more aligned with photo reconnaissance for a.. er, media project. but when there's food for the taking, food will be taken:

17 bananas
pack of biscuits
1 loaf
1 apple
grapes
bunch of plants

and kudos to alex who actually jumped in the dumspter to retrieve the buried bananas, despite the nasty smell.

hardest thing to photograph - garbage in the dark.

a large and random take

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sitting here eating my honeydew melon, i feel a little too bourgeoisie to say that we felt a little disappointed with yesterdays 'shopping', it looks like a lot but it didn't fill our fridge and didn't give us much for dinner. i made some simple cheese with the milk, and the scones were delicious, but we craved more. see, we're just as bad as everyone else.

but anyway, we did a double trip and amassed a total of:

8 red onions
10 oranges
1 lemon
3 red peppers
3 litres milk (two organic, all in date)
3 litres of juice
3 litres of different juice cordials
4 potatoes
1 honeydew melon
2kg flour
25 bread rolls
6 chocolate muffins
2 bags of cinammon twirls
360g tube of organic honey
500g brie
250g bag of mayonnaise
toilet clip-on cleaner
2 tubes of colgate toothpaste
1 tube of polos
2 kinder milk slices
bag of chocolates ('twists', like celebrations in england)

lots of food. also lots of not-food. a lot of it was thrown out due to damaged packaging (ripped or opened etc) we took the toilet thing for comedy value and can't fit it, it didn't come with instructions. some of the milk is a bit suspicious since it's still in date, but it's obvious if it's bad when you open it. maybe someone had left it outside the fridge and they then had to throw it out, maybe. if i knew we'd get more milk i'd have made more cheese. and the toothpaste is vile, with "cooling crystals" and everything. it's bright blue and burns your mouth. we normally buy our toothpaste from those expensive hippy shops, so figures.

please remember this is food for four people.

things we turned down include a crazy amount of fresh fettucini, which must have been thrown out for a reason as it was all in date - there were two crates of it. and i wish i'd taken more melons. it looked a bit skanky but it was delicious.

moonlight shopping

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shopping by the light of the full moon:

4 litres of organic milk
4 rye breads
6 organic ciabatta rolls
3 carrot scones
1kg oats
400g baby potatoes
2 aubergines
snack pack of baby carrots
6 apples
4 kinder milk slices
1 can of beer

when i went to take out our trash (packaging and what apples and potatoes were bad, etc) i couldn't help but notice the obscene amount of food someone had thrown out. there was at least three packs of sliced meat (most half full), a large tub of creme fraiche (barely a third used), a large block of cheese (which would have been edible had it been properly wrapped in foil), and several other unidentified tubs that were all far from empty. and none of it looked bad. you'd be forgiven for thinking we live in a world of plenty. this society has gotten itself into a sad state. affluence has turned everybody into assholes.