Dumpster Diving Tips

tips for dumpster diving

There's enough food for everyone, but a lot of food is chucked. Stores, consumers and producers simply dump a lot of good food! You can find this food by checking the bins you find outside of stores. Dumpster diving can also be a lot of fun!

Less affluent countries

Dumpster diving only really works in affluent countries. Unfortunately even in a country like India with a almost 70% living on less than 2$ per day a baffling 9 billion USD worth of food is wasted every year. There's definitely a lot of work to do here. Moneyless currently consists of quite a western, affluent point of view about living without money but we're looking to discuss real Third World poverty as well and hopefully find ways to help in a tiny way.

Get started diving

It's not always fun to do this, and many people find it below their standards. But the feeling is enormous when you find food. You can find crates of apples or strawberries, or tomatoes, zucchinis and bread. Enough to eat perfectly fine.

One of the better options is a small neighborhood store in your area. And you can often find good food at (smaller) supermarkets. You can also ask the shop owner if they have some left overs that can't be sold anymore. This is especially possible with bakers, they mostly throw away the unsold bread at the end of the day.

Bakeries

With bakeries it's generally a good idea to get an idea about their rules for discarding bread. 1 day? 3 days? Till there's mold? Or random? Also find out the days and times food is discarded and whether the bakery minds you collecting it. There's a wide range of possibilities here, from calling the cops to separating edible food in a clean bag for you. Then there are also bakeries that donate their left over food to charity, which is a pity if you wanted this food but it's a great way of reducing waste and helping people in need.

Non-food

It's also quite possible to go for other items than food. Furniture, old electronics, there are some good ways to make money dumpster diving.

Resources

If you still don't know good spot it's worth checking Trashwiki.org. Fellow divers use this website to share spot where you can often reap good finds.

If you don't have money for food, dumpster diving can be solution but there are many more ways to get food for free.

Give-away shop

give away shop

Are you looking for clothes, books, toys, pans or just something new to use? You could give it a try at a give-away shop, sometimes also simply called free shop. That's not a store in the traditional meaning, but a place to find free stuff.