THE ARCHIVE

for us.”

“But... can you really eat what you find in the bin? Is that hygienic?”

“Yes, you’ll see. Come on!”

The story is, a year ago, I decided to try and never have a boss. I just couldn’t stand the idea. So I have tried to carve myself out an alternative way of life, with a plan to earn money via my blog (www.andrewgubb.com). That’s a slow process, though, so I do English classes... and for food, I do bin-diving, finding edible commodities that have been thrown out.

As we came within sight of our goal, the organic supermarket Veritas, we saw a crowd of at least 20 bin-divers. I recognised some faces and made to greet them.

Something was different on that night, though. The bin-divers were talking amongst themselves agitatedly.

One of the shop assistants was standing at the door.

“What’s going on?” I enquired.

“We’re not bringing out the bins any more,” said the shop employee.

“What?”

“The management has ordered that the bins be left inside for three days, from now on, so that the food will rot and be unusable. I’m sorry.”

This hit me hard because Veritas was my sole source of food at the time. The other bin-divers were more seasoned and used to getting their food from many different places, but I don’t think anyone was happy that Wednesday evening.

A few days later, I headed back to the Veritas shop during opening hours. I asked for the manager, and found her at the back, just preparing to leave. I got a nice vibe from her—she didn’t seem like the sort of person to deny people food. I asked her if we could talk about her company’s decision to block bin-diving? At this, she began to reply to everything I said with, “You should talk to the main offices.” Finally, she told me she had to leave, and did so.

Despite her reluctance to discuss bin-diving and her company’s attitude towards it, the practice is widespread, even when the developed world is not in the midst of an economic crisis. Bin-diving is also known as ‘skipping’ and ‘binning’ in British English, and ‘dumpster diving’ in American English; in Castilian it’s ‘reciclaje’, short for ‘reciclaje de comida’. Related is the ‘freegan’ lifestyle, which involves a combination of anti-consumerist practices, the most important of which are bin-diving and veganism.