I eat for free hanging out at wasteful supermarket dumpsters

One man’s trash is another man’s three-course dinner.

A woman in England revealed she has eaten “very well” for free for the past month, while helping her community do the same simply by hanging around local supermarket dumpsters.

Jill Bennett, 62, was on her way into her local market in Northampton, East Midlands, to go grocery shopping when she noticed a supermarket worker about to trash 10 bags of food.

“I thought, ‘Surely they’re not going to throw that out,’ so I followed,” she told Kennedy News.

Bennett stopped the worker and asked if she could take the bags and had a peak inside.

“When I looked, I thought, ‘Bloody hell.’ I was gobsmacked,” she said. “I was disgusted and thrilled and excited.”

For the last month, the “freegan” has survived eating three meals a day solely supplied by her supermarket trash after she was “sickened” by seeing the fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and ready meals going to waste.

She has since been dining on lamb chops, whole chickens, ready meals, curries, apple pies and fancy chocolates all saved from the dumpster.

“I’ve eaten for free for a month now and I’ve eaten better, fresher food than I’ve ever eaten. I eat fresh food every day,” she said. “I don’t take things that are out of date or go in old bins for old food. All the food would have been sold 10 minutes earlier.”

“Yesterday I had scrambled eggs on toast, all free, for lunch I had potato, spinach and tomato curry, the only things I had myself were oil and spices and in the evening, I had roasted vegetables and couscous and apple pie,” Bennett said.

While Bennett is happy to be eating good food for free, she is disgusted by the food waste. According to a recent study by Business Waste, the UK “throws away around 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year — even though 8.4 million people in the UK are in food poverty.”

“All this food is being thrown away every single day in every single shop and it’s criminal. There’s food poverty, food waste and people can’t afford to pay their bills and eat. Probably five minutes away from them the shops are throwing fully good food away and then we get the government saying there isn’t a problem here, people don’t know how to cook or budget. It makes me sick,” Bennett explained. “It got me thinking that this is happening in every single shop in every town, every city.”

After her first stop at her usual shop, Bennett went to other local markets to see what else she could find.

“I went in the bin that time and found about £200 worth of chocolates and flowers that had been thrown away. All the chocolates were in date and all the flowers were fresh so I came back to where I live and I gave them all away. Everyone was very excited.”

The care worker noted when her local shops were discarding their unwanted or unsellable products and began returning at the same times every week hanging around the dumpsters.

“I went back the next week and waiting at 3:30 p.m. for throwing out time and the manager came out and he was about to throw it in the bin so I got out of my car and asked him if he was binning it, he gave it to me and said he hates throwing all the food away,” Bennett said.

Bennett is proud to share that she saved £100 this month that she would have spent on food, and shared four times that with her local community. “I was really pleased to be able to save the food and to share it. There was too much for me to take home.”

She recognizes that not everyone wants to track their local markets’ trash times and hang around the dumpsters, but insists that people should be aware that they can do this “on a practical level” sharing some of the food she’s just been given because she asked for it.

“For me this is a very practical thing and political. I eat for free and eat really well but I’m passionate and sickened by all this food waste and really believe something needs to be done about it,” Bennett explained, noting that many families have struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Especially in this day and age when people are really struggling with paying their bills and food.”