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A Freegan Dumpster Diving Blog
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Dumpster Diving blog from Copenhagen - eating the food you waste. Skips, freegans and dumpsters.
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Keith McHenry Interview
i recently had the opportunity to interview Keith McHenry, one of the original founders of Food Not Bombs,
on his relationship with the dumpster and the development of Food Not Bombs. this is what he had to say:
So I suppose I should start by asking if you're still a regular dumpster diver?
I do recover many discarded items but since 1980 I often talk with workers
and ask if they have produce, bread or other items they can't sell and let
them know I would be happy to redirect their future trash to provide food
for the hungry. At times if it is not possible recover food by speaking
with workers I will visit dumpsters. I also find stuff just sitting on the
sidewalk or on the sides of highways that can be great scores. So free
discarded stuff is not limited to dumpsters only.
What came first for you, dumpster diving or FNB? Was one a logical
progession from the other? How important was dumpster diving in the
creation and development of FNB?
I did do some dumpster diving many years before starting Food Not Bombs. I
found food in dumpsters while hitch hiking throughout the west. The coolest
score that became food was the discovery of 30 45cent Martin Luther King
postage stamps. I was walking out of Santa Cruz, California on my way down
route 1 when I saw a bright image in the sand. I pulled it from the dirt
and wow it was a sheet of stamps. I was really hungry so I took teem to the
Denny's at the Route 1 ramp and talked a waitress into buying them from me.
I told her she could get some glue and they would work fine. She agreed
and I had enough for breakfast and coffee.
In 1980 I trimmed organic produce at Bread and Circus in Cambridge,
Massachusetts and filled several large boxes of less then perfect produce
every morning. This seemed to be a real shame and as I was considering
seeking out people who might be interested in taking my discarded food a
young man stopped by and asked if we had anything to donate. I gave him
several boxes that he took back to Broadway House, a Catholic Workers
Shelter in Cambridge. Soon I was working with my friends taking my surplus
to community centers at local public housing projects and to Rosie's Place
Women's Shelter.
The one thing I did get out of the dumpster that changed my life happened
around the same time I was helping start Food Not Bombs. A friend told me
he saw some paper in a trash can in Harvard Square that he thought I might
want for art materials. I drove down to the trash can, retrieved the items
and brought them home. As I looked through the materials I saw that they
were the originals for IBM's annual report. This was before computers were
used for graphic design. The backs of each board were printed with the
words Letramax 2000 and the fronts were marked in light blue lines for the
outside of an eleven by seventeen sheet of paper with margins for the type
and images. Red boxes were "windows" for photos and there were thin black
"cut" lines. Each page was covered with tracing paper and that was covered
with a nice sheet of writing paper. I had already taken a few things to be
printed so I knew right off that I could be a professional graphic designer
by removing the IBM type and replacing it with my own. The next day I
started Brushfire Graphics and a couple of years later I was designing
publications for the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Celtics and winning Cleo
Awards.
Dumpster diving is probably the easiest way to acquire the large
quantities of food required for FNB, however I've found that not
everyone is comfortable eating food that's been reclaimed from
dumpsters. Whilst serving in Toronto, people often wanted reassurance from
us that the food was not dumpster dived (luckily all of our food was
donated to us at local farmer markets). How do you think FNB groups can
deal with this problem? Is it a problem at all?
I found that the easiest way to get lots of great free food is to talk
with produce workers, bakers and other food providers and ask them if they
every throw anything out. They all do and they hate the waste so they will
often agree to set their surplus food aside for you to collect. They will
need for you to be reliable so you shouldn't agree to more pickups then you
can really handle. In San Francisco I would start my day at the House of
Bagels picking up four huge boxes filled to the top. This happened seven
days a week for years. Then I drove my truck over to Thom's Natural Foods
and picked up five or six cases of organic produce. My truck was already
over flowing so I had to unload that at the morning kitchen. Then off to the
produce warehouse district in Bayview Hunters Point. Veritable Vegetable
would refill my truck with more then I could hold most days but if there
was room I could stop at the other warehouses and in one or two more stops
be loaded down with organic produce. Other volunteers were filling the Food
Not Bombs van with produce from Rainbow Grocery, Other Avenues and bakeries
all over San Francisco.
The only dumpsters we every hit was the San Francisco Bakery because the
owner was the president of the Police Commission and wouldn't help and his
dumpster was a block from my apartment and sometimes if we were late we
hit up Odwalla but if we were on time they gave us crates of great organic
juice.
I joined London Food Not Bombs in skipping at Coventry Gardens Produce
Market. We filled a panel truck in less then an hour and hadn't even
visited but a few warehouses. In Tel Aviv we filled several shopping carts
with great produce by walking from stall to stall at the produce
distribution center. In Istanbul we found that if we asked the first stall
at the produce bazaar they were sure to take food off their shelves. When
the next stall saw their neighbor was making a contribution they were
compelled to make an even larger donation. Not one produce...
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finding a bike
there can't be many cities where it's easy to dumpster dive a decent bike, but if there is one it's copenhagen.
we have more bikes than people (i just made that up). and the number of bikes that are discarded around the city,
left to rust in our shitty weather, is nothing but depressing. someone stomped the wheel or your gears got jammed,
so the ride is left half-locked to a post. and the worst thing is that you can't identify the dumped bikes until it's too late.
it makes me angry. even bikes left outside our apartment, i can scourge them for parts,
but they're never going to be a decent ride again.
discared bikes are routinely rounded up and collected by the police.
and if you like talking to the cops you can go and ask them for one before they're recycled
(more likely shipped off to china, what do i know?). or you could find a collection pile in the
street before they're taken away and help yourself. no one is going to complain.
the only problem is the ring lock on the back wheel. you can have fun trying to remove that yourself.
this is why i'm so happy when i find a moderately functioning bike in the dumpster in our courtyard,
complete with key left in the lock. thankyou thankyou thankyou. i spent a couple hours fixing
all the tiny things wrong with it, showing the world how shiny it is under the dirt, wrapping it with
"danger global warming" tape, and look at it now:
it's just beautiful.
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daylight dumpsters
i've noticed that some of the supermarkets that lock their bins away at night actually have them out
during the day. in some cases right out on the street. i'm presuming this is because they have limited room inside
(horrible thought, but they keep the dumpsters in the storage area with all the 'fresh' produce?),
and if they're working in there during the day they need the space. i noticed a while ago that one supermarket
left their bins out (something they've never done before) during a particularly long holiday weekend.
most shops didn't stay open over the holiday, but this one did. i'm guessing they ordered in extra produce whilst
the deliveries were still being made, and then had no room for the dumpsters all weekend. it's a reasonable theory.
anyway, back to the food. if you're quick and don't mess around no is going to be bothered by
a quick rummage in the bin. but the emphasis on quick. no one is going to like it either.
protip - picking garbage up off the floor to put into the dumpster gives you a nice and friendly
reason for looking in there.
well that's where my broccoli (double c, one l) came from anyway.
and here's another pile of stuff we'd never be caught buying:
that was two weeks worth of muffins. they make a terrible breakfast if you're in a rush.
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another cage goes up
we went dumspter diving and all we got was half a cucumber and a lousy bag of shitty hotdog rolls.
and most of those were moldy. piece of crap. i'm mainly blaming the fakta, which had our
new favourite dumpsters until they recently decided to build themselves a cage to lock the bins away in.
and for what? they're not just making it difficult for us, it must be a total pain for taking the bins out every morning.
we'd be doing them a favour if we tore it down. if only we weren't such law abiding citizens.
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pit bins
this was one of those huge pit bins you have to jump into. rummaging around awash in plastic bags.
digging to find treasure through all the polyethylene and coffee grinds.
kind of reminds me of that scene in star wars. just like that. wow, that terrified me when i was younger.
and look at us now. anyway. the sack we heaved home contained:
- 1kg mushrooms
- 1 red cabbage
- 10 apricots
- bunch of celery
- roses (yellow)
- 1kg carrots
- 4 yellow peppers
- 4 loaves 'normal' bread
- 2 loaves rye bread
- 12 bread rolls (various)
there's a few interesting items. the cabbage is a beast. and we find mushrooms a lot, but rarely ones that are still edible,
so that made me happy.
our friend dumpster dived enough meat to make a whole pig. well, it would be enough if
the slaughter process was reversible. and even then it'd be a pretty weird pig,
with feathers and udders and such. but you get the point. it was a lot:
and now i have a future pot of apricot jam boiling down the on stove.
it's going to be just lovely. if not a little too sweet.
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