Highlights of My Year Dumpster Diving to Reveal Supermarkets’ Dirty Secrets

Matt Homewood shares the highlights of his year of dumpster diving to reveal supermarkets’ dirty secrets.
“Back in 2018, I discovered that between 33 and 50 percent of all food produced on this planet is wasted. That’s between 1.2 and 2 trillion kilograms of wasted food every single year! No wonder we’ve created all these social and environmental problems for ourselves.

That’s when I decided to launch “An Urban Harvester” on Instagram. Through my daily Urban Harvest photos in Copenhagen, my goal is to bring these “food waste” statistics to life! After dumpster diving in thousands of supermarket dumpsters in the world’s “most sustainable” city, my mission is to end supermarket food waste in Denmark and beyond. By disrupting the prevailing supermarket business model, I believe this will help us transition to a fairer and more sustainable food system.”

Follow Matt Homewood: matthomewood.com – Instagram @anurbanharvester – TikTok @anurbanharvester

Transcript: The following is a transcription of Highlights of My Year Dumpster Diving to Reveal Supermarkets’ Dirty Secrets.

Hi everyone, my name is Matt Homewood. Today, I would like to talk to you about dumpster diving, and this right here, the global food waste fiasco.

Did you know that between one-third and one-half of all food produced on this planet goes to waste every single year? When I first heard this statistic a few years ago, I could not believe it. I mean, one-third! One-half! That is crazy. That is 3.3 trillion pounds of food or 1.5 trillion kilograms of food. It is astounding. It is a true reminder. The global industrial food system is out of control.

That is why I started my project called An Urban Harvester to reveal supermarkets’ dirty secrets. Every single day of the year of 2019, I would visit my three local supermarket dumpsters, see what I could find, harvest that, bring the harvest home, lay it out in a photograph, and share that photo on Instagram. That is how these 62 organic plant milks have ended up right here on my dinner table, in the heart of Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen.

But let us retrace the journey of how these milks got into my apartment in the first place. You can see what I got up to last year. Come follow me. Let’s go.

I am going to go dumpster diving by bicycle because Copenhagen is one of those European cities that is seriously densely built, which means that everyone cycles almost everywhere all the time. So what that means for me and my supermarket mission is that there are lots more supermarkets to choose from here. That means a lot of dumpster diving possibilities. Off we go!

When I am out dumpster diving, I do not always walk back. I normally cycle, but when it is a harvest this big, and especially in the back, I am going to walk this one home.

That was a big old harvest. I am going to start lining these up at the dinner table to take a photograph.

One of the main goals of this project is to bring all of this supermarket food waste to life. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Well, this is probably a one-off,” right? No, these 62 organic plant milks are not a one-off. Look at this harvest from just a few days ago. Forty-two tomato pastes. The thing is, they are absolutely perfect. Just a few of these, straight from Italy in southern Europe. When you think about the food, the metal, the plastic, the fossil fuel. It is crazy.

The thing is, now we are going to check out some of our harvest from last year. I think the biggest, most memorable one was when I got 157 packs of bacon. That is 16 kilos, 35 pounds of pig meat that was lying in my lounge. I worked out that that was five pigs’ worth of bacon. That was remarkable. I have had sausages. I have had so much meat in here. I have had bananas, fruit, vegetables. You name it, it has been in here. It has all come from my free supermarket local dumpsters.

Here is the question. Is Copenhagen unique? Far from it. I got introduced to the word dumpster diving three years ago by my good friend Robin, when I cycled across America with him and 30 other people doing the Green Riders trek. I vividly remember taking that first dive in New Jersey. We got gallons and gallons of orange juice. Pounds and pounds of almonds. I couldn’t believe it. During that trip is when the scale of this problem truly set in.

If all this food waste from supermarkets is happening right here in Copenhagen, one of the world’s most sustainable cities, imagine what is happening in the rest of the world. In 2019, the United Nations estimated that 690 million people suffered from hunger at one stage or another. Three billion people cannot afford nutritious food on a daily basis. Meanwhile, supermarkets in the west are dumping out perfectly edible food en masse. This is completely crazy. One hundred sixty million kilos of food in Denmark is dumped out by supermarkets every single year in this country alone.

What can we, as consumers, do about this monumental issue? There are a few options that I have spoken to. The thing is, when it comes to supermarkets, there are many other businesses that sell food, but perhaps they are more ethical. You can go to a zero waste food shop. You can go to local farmers’ markets. You can sign up to community supported agricultural schemes where consumers are linked up to producers. You can go foraging. You could do dumpster diving.

If you are keen to support me on this quest, please consider following my page on Instagram. The handle is @anurbanharvester. Together we can put more pressure on government to end this supermarket food waste once and for all. Thank you very much for watching this video. I wish you a good rest of your day.