Binning is practised all over the First World, everywhere that regulations and aesthetic considerations bring supermarkets to throw usable food away. In the US, it’s estimated that 50 percent of all food goes into the rubbish bin, while in the UK, the figure is a more modest 30 to 40 percent. While no one has come up with a figure for Spain, observers say it is increasing.
“Now that there is the crisis, people can’t buy,” said Tamanna, a worker at a Pakistani supermarket in the Raval. “A lot of people take food from the rubbish. Or they’ll come up and ask for anything I’m throwing away. I like to help out, so if I have a piece of fruit that’s very ripe, say, I’ll give it to them.”
As I’d only dipped my feet into the bin-diving lifestyle, I decided to interview someone who had—figuratively—jumped right in: my friend Natalie, a fellow British resident of Barcelona.
What got you into bin-diving?
My introduction to bin-diving was going to the markets with a friend I have who is an illegal immigrant who doesn’t earn enough to pay his rent and eat. Later, bin-diving became part of my lifestyle as I work in various social projects and bin-diving means that I don’t have to rely on my job so much and I have more time to spend on my projects.
Tell me about these projects?
I’m a volunteer English teacher for a collective in Raval that helps immigrants. I also participate in a free university project, which I help to maintain as well as planning events.
Would you say that all bin-divers share a similar profile with you?
Not at all. Maybe now you see more middle-aged people than before, because of the crisis; and normally there are a lot of quite young people who bin-dive as part of social projects. The saddest thing is the amount of really old people you see.
Old people?
They’ve been forgotten by everyone and now the only thing left for them is eating out of containers. It’s sad, because they’re uninformed and unorganised and they go to containers of household waste instead of those used by the shops.
So you need to be well-informed and well-organised to bin-dive effectively?
Organisation means that you have a network of information about where to go and where to avoid and so on, and a network of support if a shop creates problems.
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