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 the 1/3 and 1/2
of all food produced on this planet
goes to waste every single year?
When I first heard this statistic a few years ago,
I just could not believe it.
I mean, 1/3!
1/2! That is just 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 3 local supermarket dumpsters,
see what I could find, harvest that,
bring the harvest home, lay it out in a photograph,
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 us go.
[music]
I am going to go dumpster diving by bicycle
because Copenhagen is one of those
European cities that is seriously densly 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.
[music]
Come, come, check it out!
[music]
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 just going to walk this one home.
[music]
Well that was a big old harvest.
I am going to start lining these up
at the dinner table to take a photograph.
[music]
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.
42 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 just lying in my lounge.
I worked out that that was bacon for 5 pigs worth.
That was truly remarkable.
I have had sausages.
I have had so mush 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
3 years ago by my good friend Rob,
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 just couldn't believe it.
During that trip is when the scale
of this problem truly set in.
If all this food waste from supermarket
is happening right here in Copenhagen,
one of the world's most sustainable cities,
just 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.
3 billion people cannot afford nutritious food on the daily.
Meanwhile, supermarkets in the west
are dumping out perfectly edible food in mass.
This is just completely crazy.
160 million kilos of food in Denmark
is dumped out by supermarket
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 supermarket,
there are many other businesses that sell food,
but perhaps they are more ethical.
You can go to a zero waste food shops.
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.