Shock and awe...

I was almost about to say that I have a confession to make. But I think I’ll change my phraseology since I have come, after all, not to see the act as confessable. So I will simple state it as an interesting fact: I participated in dumpster-diving a few days ago. Actually, I merely drove the get away car, and this was after Rachel and I had actually done veritable shopping at the store in question--Trader Joe’s.

I remain both appalled and amazed by the vast quantity of perfectly serviceable food that is tossed in the interest of fresh turnover. Rachel has told me about it. She and her band of college and grad students, doing their best to live on a shoestring with minimal impact, have a habit of making use of surplus which would otherwise be landfill-bound.

Trader Joe’s is particularly attractive as a source of cast off food. Their turnover is quick, and their produce is ridiculously packaged in plastic cartons which are then--at discard--placed in plastic garbage bags, tied at the top. The net result is that, however you feel about dumpsters, don’t fret--the goods didn’t touch it.

As of the night of the haul we had scads of stuff waiting for processing in the kitchen. As of now, there are multiple ziplocs in the freezer of bananas, strawberries, nectarines...and we’ve pretty much downed a couple of pies and a peach cobbler made from the fruit + a cake mix. Tomorrow Rachel will return to her compound with the frozen stuff plus a passel of instant oatmeal, banana bread mix, assorted muffins, potatoes, onions...and oh, we ate the perfect avocados already. They were perfect. I’m not kidding. And personally I’m only about 35% hippie.

The foremost question I am left with: How screwed up is a system where the supply available in affluent groceries must be replaced at a rate that causes at least half to be tossed? Is there a way to rewrite the rules by which we do things such that all of this excess can go where it’s most needed? Rachel says that the problem is that while there are organizations which distribute grocery excess to food banks and shelters, there are not enough of them. And the shelters and banks themselves cannot always handle the amount of perishables which may be available at a given moment.

I am thinking this one through. I do not have the solution, nor could I rubber-stamp it into existence if I did--but it surely bears thought.