By Alexandria Scott
I know you are supposed to remember your first time or whatever, but so honestly, I cannot recall when I first jumped into the bin.
I do remember setting catfish lines with my dad on a lake in rural Alabama. There was no service in Wedowee, and I was usually grumpy on the drive, forced into a weekend of not getting to text Amanda, or Madeline, or whoever. Dad and I would push the canoe away from the rocky shore, slowly dragging the thin plastic line behind us, stopping every five or six feet to tie on a hook accompanied by the most putrid-smelling bait the tackle shop had in stock. Catfish are bottom feeders, sucking up decaying matter along the lakebed. They say you are what you eat. I guess I really took this to heart. “I’m going to tell you something, there’s country poor, and there’s city poor…. No desperate men [this city] ever knew went out and shot venison if they were hungry. They shot liquor store cashiers. Living in the big woods made of steel and cement, without cash, is a hungrier life than I knew how to think about,” writes Barbara Kingsolver in Demon Copperhead.
Not everyone likes the tactful ingenuity rural folks apply to their diets. Particularly not the officials collecting the taxes. Our ability to scrounge up food is threatening: God-fearing citizens finding loopholes in the typical money exchange, cultivating creative communities centered around participating in non-monetary economies.
In the sticks, when folks are hungry and waiting on their next paycheck, they head to the forest or the lake. In the city, I learned, you head to the dumpster.
***
Globally, around 16% of food is wasted on farms due to labor shortages, consumer preferences, and overplanting. In the United States, we waste an estimated 120 billion pounds of food throughout the supply chain each year, an amount that could feed about 1/3 of our total population. Approximately 30% of food in American grocery stores is thrown away, with overstocking for aesthetic “abundance” resulting in a 10% increase in produce waste.
As this food decays in fields, compost piles, and landfills, it resentfully releases a variety of greenhouse gases.
Often, I find statistics like these rather unintelligible, like a disobliging teenage boy who is only sitting in the pew because he got a stern talking-to from his father. Presented for show to the congregation and then quickly forgotten on the car ride home.
However, hulking statistics can provide an obscure snapshot and an unnerving introduction.
***
I recall dumpster diving seamlessly slipping into my life, an inevitable future given where I would spend my most impressionable years: a small left leaning state school in North Carolina chock-full of broke hippies looking for any excuse to tell the cops to fuck off.
On weekends we would fly down the main drag, heads out the windows, howling and cackling. As we approach our objective, our headlights flicker off, and we grow quiet.
As I pull a dozen ripe cantaloupes out of the compost bin, I feel like I made them, like I helped conceptualize and grow the things. I allow myself to feel both repulsed and grateful.
Later, we make our way around town, leaving deliveries on our friends’ doorsteps of Mountain Dew, over-stocked apples, and celery trimmings.
***
I have heard folks express concern that there isn’t enough discarded food to go around. In my experience the issue is overabundance, rarely shortage. Veteran dumpster divers have shown me that garbage gleaning can be both a form of modern self-reliance and a conduit for community care, feeding ourselves and our neighbors.
In the 1990, Lars Eighner wrote his pivotal piece On Dumpster Diving. He describes the early stages a green diver often experiences. “At first the new scavenger is filled with disgust and self-loathing. He is ashamed of being seen and may lurk around, trying to duck behind things…. Every grain of rice seems to be a maggot. Everything seems to stink. He can wipe the egg yolk off the found can, but he cannot erase the stigma of eating garbage out of his mind,” Eighner explains.
This shame generally fades over time if divers stick it out. They slowly realize their disgust stems from perceived aesthetic, not the quality of food, which minutes before occupied the shelves of a grocery store.
***
Farmers and retailers share that food waste can be mitigated by feeding scraps to animals. When I hear this, my mouth waters. I look at myself sternly in the mirror, trying to metamorphose – twisting and changing, donning big black spots and udders. Soon I’m on all fours, gobbling up the soon-to-be-rotten food. I suddenly wonder if I’m being greedy, not leaving any for the humans. But I quickly remember that as soon as my teats run dry, I’ll be sent to slaughter and likely end up on the grill or back in a dumpster.
***
One of the best first dates I have ever had involved the dumpster. I scooped up Will Riedlienger in my two-wheel-drive 4Runner and asked if we could make a surprise stop. His excited agreement affirmed my decision to ask him out. We scrounged for food, cooked a meal, and feasted.
Maybe it was my favorite date because of the dumpster. Or because after we ate, he laid his head in my lap and let me stick and poke a spiral on his skull. Or because I was 20 and my heart was still made of rubber. Whatever it was, the dumpster certainly helped.
Over the years I have found that there is a level of poignant intimacy that arises from driving behind the store late at night, hoisting your friend or lover over the brim, and scuttling home to wash and cook your score.
Today, I wouldn’t say that I’m only open to dating people who have a heart for trash food. However, at a minimum, they have to sit there and watch me eat it without a trace of disgust in their eyes. Though a glint of curiosity certainly doesn’t hurt.
***
As it turns out, scavenging is not something you have to grow out of as you mature. Now, at the ripe age of 30, I am really hitting my stride, pushing the limits on incorporating new-to-me dumpster foods into my diet.
As I reach back into the compost bin pulling out a ripe tomato, I reflect back on my time fishing, feeling a kinship with my pre-teen self. Knowing that despite the distance and perceived political divides, there is a level of ethic-based resourcefulness involved in our food procurement that crosses the rural-urban divide.