The thought of eating out of a dumpster might make your stomach turn. But for the group of self-proclaimed “dumpster divers” featured in the documentary film DIVE!, eating out of the dumpster is a source of great food, for free.
These “dumpster divers” aren’t homeless, or driven to eat out of dumpsters out of necessity. Rather, they realize that high quality, edible food is being thrown out by grocery stores and restaurants every day that is ripe for the picking.
According to the documentary, every year Americans throw away 96 billion pounds of food. And when you see the movie, you will be appalled at the kind of waste which is occurring across the country on a daily basis. It certainly changes the way you think about the food production industry, and the unnecessary toll it is taking on the environment.
Watch the trailer for DIVE! below to see more clips from the film:
DIVE! is available on DVD from First Run Features for under $20, so be sure to support this great documentary and pick up a copy for yourself.
Ian,
I am not too surprised to hear that this is going on =( One of my big pet peeve actually happens to be the wastage of food although some would argue that food is never wasted in the sense that when it finds its way to the dumpsters it will be consumed by others (i.e. divers), by animals, or simply return back to the earth and decompose. People who say this are entirely missing the point and that is those who are able to eat are very fortunate as well as what you have stated it definitely takes an toll on the environment during the production process as well as being available for the primary consumers to consume–we are simply robbing the other animals of what they could otherwise use and the irony of it all is that we are often killing them for “stealing our yields” which is a real shame when we end up wasting it anyways.