- On this week's episode, I go dumpster diving.
Stop!
Garbage bags full of lettuce, over $100 worth of vegan soup,
dozens and dozens of edible bagels.
That's what I found when I went dumpster diving
and collected and documented my own dumpster haul.
Why? Well, let me back up.
I am obsessed with following dumpster diving accounts
on Instagram and TikTok and I'm constantly shocked
and outraged by the stuff they find
that retailers throw out every day
like 800 eggs, 157 packets of bacon,
a Baby Breeza that retails at $200, Halloween costumes,
and most shocking,
thrift stores that throw out donated goods.
Not only are these dumpster divers finding usable goods,
they're posting on social media to bring attention
to waste and create change within our retail system.
That's why this week's episode is all
about dumpster diving activism
and how individuals are using social media
to bring about change.
So, I wanna know, can dumpster divers
make the world less wasteful?
To find out, I'll connect with @anurbanharvester
who uses dumpster diving to take on food waste.
- I came to this problem from an environmental angle
and actually it's this human social angle
which is far more important in many ways
and is what will solve this problem, I hope.
- Then I'll talk to @Dumpster_Godiva
who resells or donates her dumpster finds.
- When I find things like this or things like this,
I take everything to, just like the caption says on there,
this place called Sweet Celebrations.
- And finally, I'll go dumpster diving
with New York City's very own, @TheTrashWalker.
Oh my gosh.
This is really shocking to me.
And this is every single bagel store in New York City.
I'm Lucy Biggers and this is One Small Step.
On this show we've spent so much time talking
about how individuals can lower their waste.
And I still think that's really important,
but type in #dumpsterdiving on Instagram or TikTok
and you'll see the other side of this issue.
Grocery stores and retailers are throwing out large amounts
of usable goods and edible food.
At a time of historic income inequality, food insecurity,
and a global pandemic,
this practice is completely unjust and unethical.
- Hi folks.
I don't normally do all these videos at the supermarket
'cause it's risky, but this is just crazy.
This is absolutely crazy.
We've got about 700 eggs.
Look, it just goes down, and down,
and down, and down, all the way to the bottom.
Eggs that are absolutely perfect.
- Matt Homewood started his account, anurbanharvester,
to raise awareness to the unimaginable amounts
of edible food getting tossed by supermarkets in Denmark.
- All the photos of me, myself, with my bicycle
in my spare time.
So, I'm not trying to boast.
What I'm trying to say is
that this is the tip of the iceberg.
I've found in a small supermarket in Copenhagen,
157 packets of bacon.
That's 35 pounds worth of bacon, five pigs worth of bacon.
(pig squealing)
I often find whole chickens.
I'll come back with eight full chickens.
My girlfriend, who's vegetarian,
wants to kill me half the time.
But every single fruit and vegetable you can think of
is in the dumpster.
So, the leeks, the limes, the lemons, the oranges,
the red peppers, the potatoes by the bucket though.
Then you've got all the miscellaneous items.
So the toiletries, your toothpaste, your toothbrush,
I've found crockery, new mugs, and plates, and china.
You have got baby clothes,
you've got boxer shorts, glasses, candles,
and I've got my list here.
It goes on and on.
- So, how big is this retail food waste problem
in the U.S.?
Well, according to food waste resource, ReFED,
retailers generate around 10 million tons
of surplus food per year.
Of that, only 20% is donated, 30% goes to the landfill,
and the rest is used in animal feed, industrial facilities,
anaerobic digestion, incineration, or land applications.
One of the reasons edible food gets tossed
is when the product doesn't sell before the use by date,
but in the U.S., except for infant formula,
use by dates have nothing to do with food safety.
Instead, it's all about peak freshness
which means the retailers are throwing out safe
and edible food just because of an arbitrary date.
Retailers are also protected when they donate excess food.
The Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act
of 1996 encourages businesses to donate excess food
by protecting them from being sued
if anything were to go wrong.
Despite this law, good food is still going to landfill
at a time when the pressures of the pandemic have meant
that one in four households experienced food insecurity
at some point during 2020.
What do we do?
How do we solve this because it just seems like
such a big problem?
- What I think we need, we need a carrot and stick model.
We need a carrot where basically governments
across the West really incentivize supermarkets
to have no food waste, no food surplus.
Sell the food, that's what you're in business to do.
And so, then we need the stick and that's where
we know from climate change food waste is a catastrophe.
Put a massive food waste tax where basically
you're gonna shift the cost benefit analysis
to supermarkets where it's no longer worthwhile
to dump out tons and tons of food every year.
Crazy isn't it?
And some plant-based milk too.
- Okay, really quickly, this is everything that I got today.
So, I do make money off of it
and people don't seem to mind where it came from
as long as you are open about it.
- [Lucy] Aja Sanders is a U.S. postal worker
and also a part-time reseller.
When she dumpster dives,
she'll either resell items online or donate them.
But, a lot of what she finds is slashed by retailers.
- Two days ago, I found two leather bags
that they had cut up, but had they not been cut up
the retail for those, one of them is $300.
Very nice.
And then I don't know what the retail for the other one is,
but it's probably around 175, 200.
- The practice of destroying unsold products
has been written about before.
- Companies have a thing about protecting their brand,
protecting the image of their brand.
And so, there are companies that cut things up all the time,
because they don't want poor people who dig in the trash
to be wearing their items
and have their name displayed on them.
- destroying unsold products is often referred to
as damaging out and it's such a common practice
that France recently banned companies
from destroying clothes, cosmetics, and unsold goods.
- So, you say to yourself, well, why do they need
to cut these pants up
when there are people out here who need pants?
There are kids out here who are begging for school clothes.
I wish they would've done made a better decision
about what to do with these items versus putting them
in the dumpster because now I have the opportunity to go
and save this myself whereas you could have eliminated me,
the little man, really, essentially,
and just done this yourselves.
- After talking to Aja and Matt,
I had to try dumpster diving for myself.
So, I met up with Anna Sacks, AKA The Trash Walker,
outside a juice store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
It is 8:45.
A lot of stores have started to close.
Like retailers have started to close.
So, we're gonna start going through the trash.
Anna's our guide.
I'm not ready to do it without her.
I'm excited for, oh, there she is!
Hi, how are you?
- Okay, bring this over here.
- And I know we're calling this dumpster driving,
but there aren't really dumpsters in New York,
it's all in bags
in the street. - I know.
That's why I call it going on a trash walk
'cause you're walking around the city
going through the trash. - Right.
Anna uses her Instagram and TikTok
to encourage retailers to donate instead of dumping.
She's taken on big businesses like CVS
over the usable items found in their trash
and started a viral campaign called RetailMadeMe
that highlighted how companies
make employees destroy usable goods.
So this is Super Greens, use by 5/5.
- Today is 5/4.
- Yeah, a day early.
- And so is this legal to be going through trash like this?
- It's kind of a gray area, but yes,
generally it's an accepted thing that the Supreme Court said
like that it's well known that waste on the curb
is accessible for people to go through.
- So, we have $15 retail price, expires tomorrow.
Really great, Super Green vegan soups,
retailing total? - 105.
- $105.
- [Woman] Hi. Are you guys just dumpster diving?
- [Lucy] Yeah.
- So is this good?
- Are you a dumpster diver as well?
- Yeah.
- So you're like, can I have some of these?
- Yeah, it's like, what's on the curb?
- You should be checking. - Do you want it?
- Yeah. - Okay, take it.
Thank you.
We've been dumpster diving for five minutes,
found $105 worth of like really nice vegan soup
and already gave some away to a nice stranger
who wanted some.
So, already winning. - I know, right?
- Hit up one spot.
So, where are we going next?
- So that was probably a return.
- Lemon face scrub.
- [Anna] Cosmetics that are returned are tossed.
- According to one estimate,
returned inventory creates 5.8 billion pounds
of landfill waste each year.
So, why are things getting thrown out in your experience?
- A lot of it is inventory related to past holidays.
So, if you think about mother's day is coming up,
they'll have the stuff for mother's day on sale
for maybe a week and then they need to make room
for father's day.
And so, it's becomes the out with the old, in with the new.
- Next up, Anna took me to a bagel shop.
Oh wait, they're still packaged.
- [Anna] So, we just over-produce breads in this country.
And then this one.
- Stop.
Stop!
Are you kidding me?
- [Anna] This is every single bagel store in New York City.
Like this.
- Then a grocery store
where I found huge bags filled with lettuce.
Just lettuce.
And lettuce.
I feel bad when I let a little container of lettuce go bad,
you know, and then you know a grocery store
is doing this type of thing.
We finished up at a thrift store
where Anna regularly finds tossed items,
but the trash had already been taken.
- They already took it.
- What? Oh, they already took the trash?
- They already took the trash.
It was all piled up here.
(beep).
Oh (beep).
- We missed the thrift shop trash.
We got here too late for it, but I did find one puzzle
and Anna's now heartbroken
because she thinks it was just probably piled full
of usable items like this.
But I got a really sick puzzle.
So, that's all that matters.
This is actually pretty cool.
Don't feel too bad.
All right, we've reached the end of our night
of dumpster diving.
On a scale of one to 10,
10 being the most you've ever gotten in a night
and one being nothing, where are we, low?
'Cause it's a low haul? - This is very low.
This is relatively little.
And there's also all the waste,
we're looking at the waste that's downstream
of the supply chain and there's waste
along every single part of the supply chain too.
Warehouses and distribution centers,
that waste is not really accessible,
but it can be pallets filled with usable items
that they choose to destroy.
So, I would say low and also just to keep in mind
that there's like a lot of waste
that's invisible to us. - Right.
Anna recently left her job
to pursue waste advocacy full time.
She hopes to pass a federal bi-partisan bill
that can address retail waste
by closing some existing corporate loopholes
that she says leads to more waste.
- What I'm hoping it'll be like a really bipartisan,
common sense legislation, everyone can agree on
and bringing, you know nonprofits to the table,
and corporations and retailers to the table,
and government officials, and those in need,
and everyone coming together to think
about how can we create better solutions
to our wastefulness as a society?
- I really hope this video opened your eyes
to how much retailers are throwing away
and that we need to be doing something differently
as a society, as a country.
When people are going hungry,
there is no reason why perfectly good items like this
should be tossed every single night.
It is just inhumane and it needs to end.
So, what's one small step you can take?
Well, follow dumpsterdivers, and anurbanharvester,
dumpster_godiva, and thetrashwalker,
learn about retail waste.
Grassroots support can help pass new legislation
that will incentivize businesses
to donate over dumping
and create some practical, legal solutions
to this waste problem.
- Gonna make a sandwich with my dumpster bread.
Toastin' this baby up.
All right, dumpster sandwich.
It's good.