how we dive
re owen's query...
alex and i were lucky enough that through our social pseudo-network/pseudo-social network we knew lots of people that already knew where and how to dumpster-dive in our city. so my first advice would be to ask around and see if anyone else has already scoped things out; that's how we found a fair amount of the dumpsters we regularly go to.
the other places we found have been purely trial and error. once we had the confidence that there are good dumpsters out there, we were more than willing to go on bike rides to odd places on the off chance that we might find some new food.
if you want specifics, i'd say a good place to start would be all the local grocery stores. look for a store that is small enough that they can't afford a trash compactor, and more than likely their dumpster will have lots of good produce in it (if there's some place like a trader joe's near you, give it a shot, they seem particularly apt to throw nice non produce stuff out).
also very rewarding but much more difficult to track down on your own are distribution centers for stuff like naked/odwalla juice, fake meat products, and the like. the dumpsters outside of those places are full of massive amounts of things that the trucks didn't deliver for whatever reason.
in general i guess just think of businesses that generate waste in such a manner that it's more economical for them to throw it out that do something useful with it. and then find it and eat it.
oh, and this may be a bit nit-picky, but i really dislike the idea of people being worried about "giving away their hot spots" and jealously guarding knowledge about "their" dumpters or whatever, and like to discourage that sentiment whenever possible. for better or worse, there's really not a whole lot of people willing to pick through garbage and then eat the food they found in it, so there's not a whole lot of reason to be worried about being out-competed for dumpsters. but practicalities aside, the dumpsters are a community resource (cf oldschool gleaning), and the idea of people hoarding food from them is entirely antithetical to the reasons that i go dumpster-diving in the first place.
alex and i were lucky enough that through our social pseudo-network/pseudo-social network we knew lots of people that already knew where and how to dumpster-dive in our city. so my first advice would be to ask around and see if anyone else has already scoped things out; that's how we found a fair amount of the dumpsters we regularly go to.
the other places we found have been purely trial and error. once we had the confidence that there are good dumpsters out there, we were more than willing to go on bike rides to odd places on the off chance that we might find some new food.
if you want specifics, i'd say a good place to start would be all the local grocery stores. look for a store that is small enough that they can't afford a trash compactor, and more than likely their dumpster will have lots of good produce in it (if there's some place like a trader joe's near you, give it a shot, they seem particularly apt to throw nice non produce stuff out).
also very rewarding but much more difficult to track down on your own are distribution centers for stuff like naked/odwalla juice, fake meat products, and the like. the dumpsters outside of those places are full of massive amounts of things that the trucks didn't deliver for whatever reason.
in general i guess just think of businesses that generate waste in such a manner that it's more economical for them to throw it out that do something useful with it. and then find it and eat it.
oh, and this may be a bit nit-picky, but i really dislike the idea of people being worried about "giving away their hot spots" and jealously guarding knowledge about "their" dumpters or whatever, and like to discourage that sentiment whenever possible. for better or worse, there's really not a whole lot of people willing to pick through garbage and then eat the food they found in it, so there's not a whole lot of reason to be worried about being out-competed for dumpsters. but practicalities aside, the dumpsters are a community resource (cf oldschool gleaning), and the idea of people hoarding food from them is entirely antithetical to the reasons that i go dumpster-diving in the first place.
COMMENTS:
said: RE: hotspot hoardingI agree with you mostly, except that I have heard stories about Montreal in which well intentioned but debatably priveledged persons began cleaning out the dumpsters and thereby denying it to the homeless community - who had partially depended on that food. Of course things like foodNOTbombs would serve to alleviate that potential problem, but it could still pop up as a problem. I know that a lot of areas don't have a large enough homeless community to support the amount of waste that is produced, and likewise the places that do have large homeless communities tend to be pioneers of garbage protection technology (GPT), like the compactors, but I think that it's still important to be aware of the potential impact. That said, I will swing by trader joes next time i'm in that area.
rmd said: yeah, taking food out of the mounth of someone who needs it more is always something i'm conscious of. for most of the places we go it's not an issue.
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