Dumpster diving, or freganism, has been around for a while but the current movement gained momentum through restauranteur (and Against Me! drummer) Warren Oakes’ magazine, Why Freegan?

Although we’ve detailed the movement a few times, a twist on things UK Chef Dylan Rakhra has a different take on things – a dumpster-diving driven restaurant, Skipchen, where the menu changes every day based on ingredients that are available. According to the Guardian Skipchen’s suppliers are of the public kind, “Some of the food is donated but most is found: on farmland, outside mainstream restaurants and, most commonly, in supermarket skips.” Skips are garbage bins. 

After Skipchen closes, its teams of volunteers go on the prowl to “intercept” foodstuffs that have passed their sell-by dates and, though they are perfectly safe and edible, are discarded by the major stores. “We get the food from anywhere and everywhere that has food going to waste,” said Sam Joseph, co-director of the Real Junk Food Project, which has launched Skipchen in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol.

Joseph accepts that it is not legal to scavenge from supermarket skips but he argues that it is the right thing to do. “If edible food is going in the bin that’s wrong. “We really need to get it to people. We have cases of malnutrition rising in the UK. This isn’t something happening over in Africa. People here are struggling to feed themselves nutritiously. The real crime is the supermarkets throwing that edible food in the bin. That’s what we need to change.”

Joseph said the teams of “skippers” watch as supermarket workers bin food and pluck it as soon as they can. “I am really conscious of food safety and food hygiene,” said Joseph. We get the food out and into a refrigerator straight away. They don’t use food that has gone beyond its best-before date whereas we will.”

Customers are invited to pay what they want and can eat for free if they are struggling financially. “I think it’s a brilliant idea,” said Sullivan. “It’s a scandal that so much food goes to waste.”

Where the movement falls apart is giving the dumpster-salvaged food away to needy folks who may not be provided with enough information to make risk/benefit decisions: this food is free, but because we don’t know how it was handled, and can’t cook many toxins out of it, it might make you barf.