Dive! Living off Americas Waste Journal

     The documentary ‘Dive! Living off America’s Waste’ is about people who dumpster dive for food. The documentary primarily follows a family of four who live off the food found in dumpsters located behind grocery stores. However, there are other stories and facts that are brought to light. The father discusses the waste across the food chain from the farm to the store to the household, landfills, and feeding the homeless.

     The father goes out to the various grocery stores dumpster after the stores have closed. The stores throw away food that is perfectly safe to eat. Food that is close to or outside the ‘sell by date’, meat that has turned a little brown, and pre-packaged food such as fruit that may have one piece that has rotted is thrown away daily. Another interesting point was that the people who dumpster dive followed a couple of unwritten rules such as leave the dumpster area cleaner than you found it and take only what you can consume. The impression that I got was these people could afford to buy their food, but wanted to make a bigger statement about the waste of perfectly good food.   

     The United States throws away 96 billion pounds of food per year.  Half of the food grown is never harvested. The amount of food wasted cost more money than what is spent on food stamps. The amount of food wasted could feed the homeless here in the United States and abroad. The documentary made it very clear that the grocery stores do not want to address the issue. President Bill Clinton passed ‘The Good Samaritan Act’ to absolve stores’ from liability if they donate food and someone becomes ill.  

     There are several different areas to research such as how is the ‘sell by date’ determined and what does it mean what, what criteria do stores use when discarding food, and why does the United States waste so much food even before it makes it to the store.