Kumera Kitchen and Permaculture

How do the concepts of waste and food intersect in modern urban settings via the practice of dumpster diving?

By Darcy Watson-Russell - email darcywr@gmail.com

Waste and food are inherently linked in modern urban and suburban Western cultures. Waste, which in the context of this essay will be considered as food waste only, is characterised as the undesirable and useless post-food consumption leftovers, and food, conversely, as the useful, desirable product. As such, a slew of negative meanings are attached to waste; it is base, immoral, undisciplined, disgusting and is “at the heart of so many moral economies that it’s difficult to find any sense in which it isn’t bad.” [Hawkins, 2006, viii]. Opposing positive meanings are often attached to food; to eat is to sustain and nourish life, as “[w]ithout food, human bodies simply cannot exist” [Heynen, Kaika & Swyngedouw, 2006], and to provide a meal is to express love and care, considered among the loftiest of qualities [Tomnay, 1998]. Together, these form a closed circuit, with food at the beginning and waste at the end: food is grown, harvested, processed/packaged, transported and sold to a consumer, who uses what they wish to use, and disposes of the rest. The food that is not sold is thrown into dumpsters, industrial-sized garbage bins. The relationship between these two concepts is far more complicated than a simple binary opposition, however. In practices such as dumpster diving [see Appendix], some of the rich intersections between food and waste can be seen. Through the process of taking waste from a bin, making it into a meal, and then discarding the scraps anew, this waste is re-imagined as food, regaining potential and subverting simplistic binaries. Waste is not “supposed” to be reincorporated into the workings of the closed circuit mentioned above, particularly not where it is literally taken back into the bodies of both the system and of people. This subversion suggests the political nature of dumpster diving, and plays into complexities of cultural reappropriation, which can be problematic as a political tool and affects the relationship between waste and food through the lens of political theory (this idea is examined further with regards to dumpster diving in James Connolly’s 2008 article “Rethinking Crimethinc”). This is important to note, however this project is specifically concerned with the everyday transformation of waste into food, and the contradictions and complications of this process via dumpster diving. As such, I have focused largely on interviews and surveys of members of the dumpster diving community in Perth and Melbourne in Australia, and Edinburgh and London in the UK, as well as my own experiences with the practice, in order to see how the waste is re-imagined. The politics of these individuals and communities have contributed to their reasons for dumpster diving, but of more importance to my argument is the process, and what happens to the food they find, less so why they choose to eat this way. Specifically, this essay is concerned with the bypassing of the closed food-to-waste circuit, and the steps taken to do so; removing the food from the bin, making raw ingredients into a meal or product, and then the problem of disposing of the leftovers and how this is negotiated.

The first step taken in this process is the initial re-imagining of waste – the moment when it is pulled out of the bin and seen as an object full of potential, food for the individual and the community. Dumpster divers see waste differently precisely because to them, it was not waste to begin with; it was always viable food. What was being wasted was the potential of this food, which is regained when it is taken out of the bin. KA says, “I find such amazing organic food and goods, and I wonder how the stores can throw this out when someone has taken the energy and care to grow, pick, pack and transport such food” [KA Garlick, personal communication, 12 May, 2010]. Instead of seeing an amorphous rotting mass, KA and other dumpster divers see real food, and seek to re-invest it with its lost potential. This re-imagining brought out many different emotions in the dumpster divers I spoke to. Most felt elated or excited, pleased to get a good haul of edible produce, happy to be saving it from landfill, and at least one felt “mischievous” because ey^¹ was getting one up on what another person described as “the capitalist agribusiness... food paradigm” [G Pullen & C Jones, personal communications, 10 May, 2010 and 17 May, 2010]. All the interviewees mentioned that while they were happy to have free food to eat, they felt angry that good food was being wasted for environmental and/or social justice reasons. Many were excited about the abundance of food, as it meant there was more to share with friends; the dumpster divers in the UK all mentioned this specifically. Sam, who lives in Edinburgh, said; “If we get a lot of stuff often flats will distribute it between everyone. My Mum skips [UK terminology for dumpster diving] and she once brought me two 10 kg boxes of Stilton cheese which we shared amongst our friends and their flats.” [S Jones, personal communication, 12 May, 2010]. When I was staying at one of the aforementioned flats in December 2009, my friend Scoutt and I found multiple packets of kale, one of my favourite vegetables, in the Tesco bin on my first night there. Used to the often heat-wilted, bad-smelling greens of Australian bins, I was delighted to find that the kale had stayed fresh and green in the Scottish winter, all in convenient (albeit environmentally-unfriendly) packaging. Immediately I began thinking of what I could cook with it, how good it would taste. Dumpster diving turns waste into a kind of food treasure-hunt, where you never know what treats you may find. The same night, we also found some good bread, and a large amount of caramelised onion hummus, packaging only slightly dented, and still edible. Instead of this waste being seen as dirty and undesirable, something to be avoided at all costs, it was, in fact, incredibly desirable. Far from being “bad for you”, this waste was still edible, and high in important nutrients; vitamins, minerals, protein and carbohydrates. The meaning of waste here was subverted – it was food once more, and in a way, far more exciting due to the random luck factor, the whiff of illegality, and not having to pay for it.

In order to understand some of these interactions, it is relevant to look at how and why waste has been traditionally envisioned as “bad”. Gay Hawkins, in The Ethics of Waste [2006], typifies waste as representing a “brute physicality – some kind of failure” [p1] , and as a symbol of an “economy utterly dependent on disposability” [p2]. Waste is a “phobic object” that must be avoided at all costs, not only because it is smelly, messy and unpredictable, but also because it represents the corruption inherent in the current economy. Waste brings with it a sense of guilt, as it is environmentally unfriendly, and inefficient, both grave sins in the mainstream Western society of today. When food is obtained from a bin, the messiness and uncertainty of waste are brought back to food. Efforts have been made throughout history to make food safer; from religious doctrines prohibiting the eating of meat and dairy together, to the rise of hand-washing before and after eating in the Tudor period (1405-1603), and more recently, with organics and extensive packaging [Shaw, 2005]. Dumpster diving blurs the lines of safety and danger in food through blurring the very lines between food and waste.

One the food comes out of the bin and is taken home, it has regained some of its discarded potential, and begins to move into a second phase, where it becomes ingredients. Before it makes this transition from potential food to actual food, it goes through an intermediate stage – washing. Many of the dumpster divers I spoke to mentioned washing their food, some even washing the packaged food, before it was allowed to go into the fridge or cupboard with the other food. This washing is can be seen as both practical and symbolic. As Rainbo recalled from her dumpster diving days in Melbourne earlier this decade; “We had a rule in the house that as soon as anything was brought in from the dumpster, it was always washed in detergent, or given a thorough wash before it went into the fridge, so that anyone taking it wouldn’t have to worry about getting germs, being contaminated... just out of respect for the house.” [R Dixon, personal communication, 16 May, 2010]. Here are two ideas – the idea of hygiene and cleanliness in terms of avoiding getting sick from eating dumpstered food, but also the symbolic notion of it being “respectful” to wash food, to bring the dumpstered food closer to the standard of cleanliness of non-dumpstered foods. Charles, a dumpster diver from Perth, also mentioned that generally he “like[s] to balance a meal with dumpster ingredients with non-dumpster ingredients, just to be sure.” [C Jones, personal communication, 17 May, 2010]. This ambivalence about the edibility of dumpster food is interesting. On one hand, dumpster divers claim that the food is perfectly good, but on the other hand, there is still a reference back to the fact that this food was once waste. Clearly, there is a difference between dumpster food and store-bought food that goes beyond where it is obtained. Some of this difference goes back to the issue of food safety, but this also harks back to traditional visions of waste – perhaps there is still waste present in the dumpster food. This difference also carries over into dumpster meals. In some ways, dumpster meals have a different significance to store-bought meals. There is a feeling of pride in being able to say that all of the food in a meal is from a bin; it was all free, and it was all salvaged from landfill. For many outside of the dumpster diving community, there is also a wariness that may accompany this announcement. Is it safe? Will I get sick? Peter Singer and Jim Mason mention a night spent dumpster diving with regular dumpster divers in North Melbourne, and their ensuing meal together, in their book The Ethics of What We Eat [2006]. Their uncertainty about the practice is apparent, from the way they describe the vegetables found as “tired” [p238], to their “evident discomfort” [p240] upon learning the use-by date of the organic apple juice they had just enjoyed, and finally the note of surprise that they “experienced no after-effects” [p240]. The reaction of the non-dumpster diver invited to share a dumpster meal can perfectly illustrate the delicate balance that is struck between food and waste, and the problem of ever completely separating the two with reference to dumpster diving.

Dumpster meals, whilst providing food for the stomach, can also provide food for the community. Many interviewees spoke about sharing dumpster meals with others in their community as a way of bringing people together. This function of food is well-documented [Tomnay, 1998], and turns the idea of waste as something to be secretive about and ashamed of on its head. Here we see waste celebrated, not only as food, but as a symbol of the aforementioned “one up” on the capitalist food industry. The practice of sharing the process of dumpster diving, as well as sharing the food gained, is one of community-building. Grace said [on dumpster diving]; “The biggest thing that I get out of it is community, you go with your friends and it’s fun, always kind of an adventure.” [G Pullen, personal communication, 10 May, 2010]/ The “real waste” here might be knowing that the dumpsters are full of good food, and not having a community to share it with. The “real food” included meals of curry (vegetables, spices, coconut milk and all sourced from the dumpster), borscht and even a chocolate and banana cake made entirely from bin ingredients. This cake was the creation of Katrina for a university assignment on sustainability. Not only was it a comment on the wastefulness of the current system, but as a symbol of celebration, the cake overturns the notion that all waste is negative. [K Patton, personal communication, 19 May 2010]. Indeed, in this case, it was not only positive, but luxurious as well; cake is not a “serious” food, nutritionally, and implies that the person eating it has the means to obtain more nourishing food [Tomnay, 1998]. The creation of such luxury from waste ingredients only serves to highlight the point that waste and food cannot be as easily separated as modern cultural assumptions would suggest.

The food that comes from the bin may once again return to the bin. At some point in their dumpster diving careers, most have brought home something that did not get eaten, for whatever reason, and it has been returned to the bin from whence it came, often with mixed emotions. There is an ambivalence about returning the dumpstered food to landfill. For some, this is acceptable – there is no moral obligation to eat the rescued food as it was “already waste anyway”, and “at least I tried”. Here, the idea that dumpster food is “perfectly good” is again challenged. There is clearly a difference between dumpster food and store-bought food, in that dumpster food is closer to being waste. My own recent experience with a box of dumpster dived custard apples lead to my contemplation of this notion. The custard apples were left in the house over a weekend whilst my housemates and I were away, organising a community event. When we returned, despite our best efforts to cover them up, fruit flies had made their way into the box, and there was also some mould on a few of the pieces of fruit. My compost bin was full, and the worm farm also could not take any more decaying food at that point, so sadly, they went into the green bin and on their way to landfill. I felt a mixture of guilt and apathy about this; guilt, in part, because a friend had gotten these custard apples, not me, and so they were a gift of sorts, and such an expensive and rare fruit deserved to be eaten. The apathy possibly came from the very fact that they were from the bin, and at the moment when I decided to return them there, the cleanliness of my kitchen was a higher priority than dealing with the waste sustainably. In analysing the way I described this situation, I noticed that over the course of the weekend those custard apples were transformed from waste, to food, and back to waste again, underlining the mutable nature of these concepts in dumpster diving.

For other dumpster divers, the idea that food should go back to landfill is abhorrent, and they use other methods of disposal. The two most commonly-cited methods of disposing of leftover dumpster food were compost and chickens. Most of the interviewees said they had a compost heap or worm farm that they used to dispose of their scraps, and several had chickens that could eat the scraps. Kath mentioned; “I used to feel crappy about it [not eating all the food she took home] before I had my chickens as it would go to waste... even though it was going to waste before... but it’s all good now” [K Grimbly, personal communication, 13 May, 2010]. Dumpster divers who have compost heaps or chickens generally reported that they did not feel bad about failing to eat all that they brought home. By using these mechanisms, they were still able to avoid the “useless waste” paradigm, and keep the food they had “rescued from landfill” out of the food-to-waste closed circuit. Instead, their food could remain food, bypassing the waste stage, by becoming food for different species. The role that earthworms, in particular, play in this transformation is very interesting. Earthworms are detritivores, and make an “important contribution in curbing organic pollution and providing topsoil in impoverished lands” [Kale, 1998]. Taking organic pollution here to refer to waste food, it is interesting to note this final step in the chain of removing dumpster food from the food-waste circuit. As detritivores, earthworms feed on waste, and also create viable soil for planting, amongst other things, food crops [Kale, 1998]. Earthworms are also a microcosm for the practice of dumpster diving. As worms feed from waste, transforming it into something useful, so too do dumpster divers, so it is interesting that these two systems often seem to exist in symbiosis with one another. Food and waste, then, become interchangeable concepts, with the only qualifier being “Whose food?” Is it food for worms, or food for people? Food for worms will very soon become food for people once more, as fertile soil is created, and seeds are planted. These seeds may even have come from dumpster fruit and vegetables themselves; my friend Michael has spoken to me at length about his attempts – which have met with varying success – at creating “dumpster dived gardens”, where all of the produce is grown from seeds and offcuts of dumpster food [M Brazel, personal communications, 2006-2010]. In such a system, virtually no waste is created, and everything within the cycle is food. Where is the food-waste binary then?

Where, indeed? Having gone through the process of being selected and taken from the dumpster, perhaps distributed amongst friends, washed and prepared, turned into a meal and eaten, with the scraps being discarded and often composted or fed to chickens, what emerges is a far less rigid distinction between the supposedly contradictory concepts of food and waste. Dumpster food is neither waste, nor food – it is both, and neither, simultaneously. It has been re-imagined, from bin, to table, and back again, by the dumpster divers of modern urban and suburban environments. Waste, to them, has less to do with physical corruption, and more to do with potential, with every bin containing the possibility of a feast. Food, then, can become a commodity that is not scarce, but may be found readily, providing one is willing to use their imagination.

Appendix

Dumpster diving: The practice of taking discarded items, often food items, from industrial bins (dumpsters) used by supermarkets, bakeries, and other retail [food] outlets. Dumpster divers do not literally “dive” into the bin, but may climb into it feet-first, equipped with a flashlight or head-torch in order to better see the food. This is usually undertaken at night, after store opening hours, and dumpster divers can face the risk of being prosecuted by shops for “stealing” the waste, or possibly for trespassing, depending on the location of the bin. Bins may also be locked, and some dumpster divers use bolt cutters, or a “dumpster key” (depending on how the bin is locked) in order to open the bin. This practice is often part of the DIY/punk/anarchist subculture, and most of the dumpster divers I spoke to chose to obtain food this way as a protest about the waste that is created by the capitalist food system, the environmental cost of food, the unavailability of food to those of very little means, as well as for personal financial reasons.

[Wetlands Activism Collective. 2008. Freegan.Info: Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism. www.freegan.info (accessed 2/4/2010).]

Gender-neutral pronouns: Several of the interviewees prefer to be referred to using gender-neutral pronouns. For the purposes of this essay, I have used Spivak pronouns, which were the preference of several of the interviewees. Spivak pronouns are used as such:

Ey has a pronoun. That is eir pronoun. That pronoun belongs to em. That pronoun is eirs. (As compared to, she has a pronoun, that is her pronoun, that pronoun is hers).

Spivak pronouns are pronounced similarly to common informal third person pronouns they, their, them and theirs. There are a variety of other gender-neutral pronouns in use, mostly amongst queer and transgender circles, such as ze/hir/hirs, ze/zir/zirs, ze/zan, they/them/theirs, and so on.

Some people may use gender-neutral pronouns because their gender and/or sex identity lies outside of the gender binary, and others may as a political exercise to remove the emphasis from gender. There may be other reasons for using these pronouns, too. My use of gender-neutral pronouns for those who requested it in this essay is a mark of respect for their identities and politics. I believe that pronoun assignment should be consensual, and as such included a question about preferred names and pronouns in all of my interviews and correspondence.

[Williams, J. 2004. Gender Neutral Pronoun FAQ. http://aetherlumina.com/gnp/ last accessed 20/5/2010].

References

Literature:

Edwards, C.A. 1998. Earthworm Ecology. Boca Raton, Florida: St Lucie Press

Hawkins, G. The Ethics of Waste. 2006. United States of America: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Heynen, N, Kaika, M, and Swyngedouw, E. In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism. 2006. New York: Routledge.

Mason, J and Singer, P. The Ethics of What We Eat. 2006. Melbourne, Australia: The Text Publishing Company.

Shaw, I. 2005. Is It Safe to Eat?: Enjoy Eating and Minimise Food Risks. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag.

Tomnay, S. 1998. The Secret History of Food. London, UK: MQ Publications Limited.

Websites:

Connolly, J. 2008. Rethinking Crimethinc, at Illvox:

Anarchist/Autonomous/Anti-Authoritarian People of Color – All Power Thru the People. http://illvox.org/2008/01/rethinking-crimethinc/ (accessed 2/4/2010)

Wetlands Activism Collective. 2008. Freegan.Info: Strategies for Sustainable Living Beyond Capitalism. www.freegan.info (accessed 2/4/2010).

Williams, J. 2004. Gender Neutral Pronoun FAQ. http://aetherlumina.com/gnp/ (last

accessed 20/5/2010).

1 Ey: Spivak pronoun, a form of gender-neutral pronoun, in this case used instead of she or he. See Appendix for detailed list of pronouns used by interviewees.

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