Dumpster Diving for Food While Biking Across the USA
Dumpster Diving for Food While Biking Across the USA
While cycling across the United States, I dove into hundreds of grocery store dumpsters.
In one summer, I ate nearly 300 pounds of dumpster food and learned that we throw away $165 billion worth of food each year in the United States or about half of all the food we produce. All while one in seven Americans are food insecure. Since this adventure, I’ve learned that it doesn’t have to be this way though and that the solutions are already there.
For a deeper look into how to end food waste and hunger, watch my TEDx Talk, How to End the Food Waste Fiasco:
Learn about the issue of food waste and how you can help put an end to grocery store food waste:
The Food Waste Fiasco: You Have to See It to Believe It
See our Complete Guide to Dumpster Diving to learn how to dumpster dive.
Transcript: The following is a transcription of Dumpster Diving for Food While Biking Across the USA.
I’m in Holdredge, Nebraska, outside of the local grocery store, and all this food around me came from the trash.
One dumpster outside here had enough food to feed me for the next three months and I would say this right here what you see is probably about maybe a 50th or 100th of the total food in there. Literally, they could have fed at least 50 families this weekend with the food that was all in there. Still good. Obviously a lot of it is good healthy food, too. These bananas are even organic. So, one thing I’m learning on this trip is that we do not have a shortage of food in the United States, the only thing we have is a distribution problem. The food is here, we’re just not giving it to people in the right way.
So I just pulled into Mount Vernon, Iowa, after a pretty long day of biking.
And we’re 25 miles from Lincoln, Nebraska, where we’ll spend the night.
Early morning in Jackson, California, we’re about 1,500 feet up into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
So we’re at a little grocery store here in Iowa.
I’m just outside of Michigan City, Indiana. And boy, is this dumpster a treasure chest!
We’ve got some yogurt, all sorts of bread, and melons. This milk expired yesterday. Bottled water, they’re all in the trash, too. Corn, watermelon, Naked juices. These eggs expired yesterday. These are potatoes and there are some oranges down there that are good. A couple of sandwiches and a whole bunch of salads. Creamy Havarti cheese, still cold. Mandarin spinach salad. This is a spinach salad, some chocolate milk. We got a whole bunch of cheese imported from Ireland, just expired a few days ago.
Spain. Shipped all the way from Spain and ended up in a dumpster. Some other stuff I probably won’t eat like (unintelligible chattering). And I found this delicious trash bread. Awesome, awesome trash bread. So it’s going to be a great night. I’m definitely gonna bite into this ice cream.
America throws out $165 billion worth of food each year. Basically, 30 percent of food purchased in the USA is thrown out. Now, that is just an absolutely absurd amount. I don’t know the exact answer to the problem, but I know there are solutions. And if we work on it, this is America, the “greatest country in the world” after all. If we work on it, we can figure something out.
